Pulling dash for heater core access on 380SL (or R107 cars in general)
 

Drat! Curses!

Been flushing the cooling system of an '83 380SL (see my posts elsewhere for the gory details). Yesterday, I noticed a heavy steady drip from a weep tube beside the transmission.

Archive search confirms that those tubes (plural, there are two, one is probably stopped up) go to the box where the heater core and AC evaporator live. But the AC ain't been run in weeks. The heater was on full as part of the flush process. Turning the heater off stops the drip. Turning the heater on starts it up again right away.

Looks like I have to rip the dash out. Grrrrrrrr. That or pay 20 hours at the shop. Geez, that's the blue book value of the whole car! Okay, I'll do it myself.

But the service CD for the 107 series from MBUSA barely goes into the job. It talks about console and instrument cluster removal as two separate jobs (and those are reportedly part of getting to the core). It does not talk at all about how to pull the dash.

Is anyone aware of any manuals that do talk about dash removal to get to the heater core? Or has anyone done the work?

Wondering also if I should just cut the core out of the coolant circuit and leave the car heatless. It is basically only a summer driver anyway.

Hey, isn't "The Core" a new sci-fi horror movie, anyway? How appropriate.

s/b

I am working on a similar repair on my 129 sl - I am replacing a leaking evaporator. Of course, when I ordered the parts they suggested I replace the heater core also so I would not have to remove the dash again, so I bought that, a new dryer and a new expansion valve. Anyway, I could not find any information on removing the dash, etc - my factory repair manual barely even shows where the parts are located. I bought a subscription from www.alldatadiy.com for my car - only $25 for the year. It shows how to remove every component and gives pretty detailed instructions. You might give them a try.