Memorial Day 2015

I started this morning by cleaning the air inlet. The air inlet goes directly behind the blower motor on the interior side of the firewall. I had forgotten about this piece when I cleaned the rest of the heater box. Here are some pictures for reference.

There is a broken tab on the air inlet. I noted that it was broken when I removed it in 2012. I am not sure of the function, but I plan to glue it back in place.

Before cleaning the air inlet I removed the actuator.

I sprayed the entire air inlet with non-toxic cleaner.

Then I rinsed it with water.

Then I used hot water and more non-toxic cleaner to clean it by hand with a rag and toothbrush.

I used my shop blower to dry it thoroughly.

I used Gorilla Super Glue Gel to glue the broken tab on the air inlet.

Next I wire-wheeled the mounting hardware for the air inlet and the rest of the heater box and blower housing.

While I was doing that, Sara cleaned the rest of the foam seal for the evaporator core and also the bracket for the receiver drier/accumulator. Here is a before picture:

And an after picture:

Next we moved on to installing the heater box. There is a single stud built into the heater box that pushes through to the firewall and helps secure the blower housing. It was a little tricky getting this to line up along with the heater core pipes. Sara helped guide it into place from the engine bay side.

With it in place I tightened down the nut and washer.

Installed heater box as seen from engine bay:

Installed heater box as seen from interior:

I reassembled the actuator onto the air inlet.

I also applied polyurethane grease to the joint between the actuator arm and the diverter door. I also applied this to all these same joints in the heater box today prior to installing it.

When I went to install the air inlet I realized this should have been installed before the heater box. I ended up loosening the nut and washer on the engine bay side just to the end of the stud to allow the heater box to move enough to slide this in. 

It was a tight fit but we got the air inlet installed.

Next I just needed to find the four screws to mount the air inlet. None of the ones we have labeled in the bags look right. We do not have a bag labeled "air inlet". Obviously I did not get specific enough when labeling bags. I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out which screws were the correct ones. Sara and I became frustrated, and we gave up for today. The parts and illustration guide that I have lists the correct type of screw, so we might just go buy four new screws for the air inlet. We decided not to do that today, however, and instead grill Tilapia for Memorial Day dinner. We were hoping to get more done on KITT than we did, but we are proud of what we did accomplish this weekend.