the heater and firewall

I didn't get all the pictures that were needed because it was hot and sonic had happy hour.  Sorry.

The firewall is in excellent shape. The firewall insulation holders were shot so I put it back up

with some new fangled plastic rivets

The back of the heater box , in better shape than I thought it would be..

The whole box comes out with 4 nuts from the engine compartment, 2 vent cables and 2 heater hoses.

November 28 1972.  I was 2 years and a few days old when it was made.

The inside of the heater box.  I cleaned half an oak tree, several wasp nests, and a gopher out of here

On the left is the fully functioning blower motor. ( one of the intelligently designed parts on this... you can remove the blower motor without removing anything else) on the right is the wasp haven heater core.  It isnt rusted, the foam just disintigrated over 30 years

Testing the heater core- cleaned it off and out- the thing held water for half an hour.

I re foamed the perimeter of the core and inserted it in the box.  Then for good measure the fresh air deflector was foamed

to increase the efficiency of it.

NOTE:  one tube of the core has a reduced inner diameter.  If this is used as the inlet it won't let much hot water through to

heat it up.  If hooked up through the other side, the heater core will be pressurized with hot water.

This is the inside of the fresh air intakes that come off the cowl. In good shape thankfully.

It had an entire oak tree and squirrels and nuts and bark in it suggesting the commando was parked for quite a while.

The large drain tube goes into a rubber pipe that goes just under and across the glovebox and drains INSIDE (really)

the passenger kick plate next to the floorboard. The final drain is a 1" hole @ the front rocker panel.   

It's really a wonder that the entire side of this thing is in good shape and isn't rusted off.