I have a 2004 xterra with symptoms of a bad heater core. Does anyone know how difficult this is to replace?. The car is out of warranty so I will be doing it myself.

thanks for any help

-jr

wELCOME TO THE CLUB!
i cant answer your question, though there are a few on here that could
its good to have yai sure hope you stick around after you resolve this!

Moved to proper location

i know there was a thread that had somthing to do with the core but i dont remember who it was..... and also welcome to the club....

Looks like there's a lot involved. You wanna run through your symptoms with us just to make sure you don't do this unnecessarily?
I says in the steps to remove the steering member assy, don't know what that means really. Maybe Aretelio might have some better information for you. But it looks like the cooling box is in the way of the heater box, and has to be removed first. Would probably have to pull a lot of things out of there.

Yeah, heater cores are a pain in the ass.

Cyclemut probably has more hands-on experience in this matter, but I've seen my techs tear dashes apart to get to HVAC components. I don't think it's overly complicated, but simply time-consuming on epic levels.

If I were you jrthekid, I'd make damned sure you need to replace the heater core before you have your dash torn apart.

Speaking from experience I can tell you that it's not a very common problem...

What, exactly, are your symptoms?

I'd try tightening the heater hoses at the firewall before condemning the core. I've seen a loose hose squirt anti-freeze into the passenger compartment, giving the "smell and moisture buildup" portions of the blown core a couple of times.

Give that a shot, 8mm wrench on those bad boys to tighten them down.

Thanks for the replies. I've seen 'fog' come out of the defrost and a/c vents and sometimes get a whiff of antifreeze but can't tell where its coming from. This doesn't happen all the time though. I actually haven't seen the fog in a while, but still can smell antifreeze sometimes.