The deconstruction of Stinky continues. I’ve got the entire dash and dash supports out, the shifter and pedal assemblies are removed, the console is out, and the heater core is gone. I’ve also already sold the rear deck carpet and the gauge cluster. I got the headlight and turn signal assemblies installed on Dirty, and I’ve been planning out what I’m going to do for the interior.
I found that something had been living in the heater core, so I took it apart to remove all the stuff that was jammed down into the blower motor. I took out the A/C evaporator, since the car won’t have A/C, and figured I might as well open up the other side of the core to make sure there was nothing nasty over there. Good thing, too, because I discovered that the heater core has a burst copper pipe. It looks very much like the pipe froze, bubbled, and burst, and judging by the icky coolant in the car, there probably wasn’t much, if any, antifreeze. My guess is that the car got so nasty-smelling because the carpet was getting a steady diet of nasty water, leading to plenty of mildew in the passenger foot well.