Heater core

Hi All,

Your precious help & advise are needed again:

Lesabre 2001 custom (~80K miles), few days ago the weather went cold, and I used the heater (single temperature lever, not dual a climate control module), and when before i went out of the vehicle, i noticed few cooling liquid drops on the passenger side carpet, I also smelled the cooling liquid when the heater was on.

My main suspect is the heater core, is there a valve that could leak when moving the temperature lever to red (hot)?, is it a common problem?

My second question, what should i take off to get to the heater core? (assuming it is my problem)


again,
Thanks for your help:)

No valve, just the core! The core is in a box behind the glove compartment. Not an easy job, unless you are young & nimble.

Not an easy job, unless you are young & nimble.

Lets say i was young before starting this fix :)

I took of the glove box, couldn't figure how to proceed, so i took off all the dashboard, then i saw the black heater/AC box (unit), i took all the small screws i saw, but still :banghead:

please take a look at the 2 pictures of the current status:
http://sites.google.com/site/lesabre01site/Home/pics

should i take the whole black box out? (for some reason, i believe the AC lines should be dis attached to take the whole box).
in the second picture, i see a heat exchanger, is it the AC or the heater core?, and any idea how to reach the heater core lines clips behind the engine?

any help is appreciated.
Thanks.

If you pull the box apart, you should see the core, it looks like the one shown below.
OEM Part Number 52482185 Physical Size 10 1/2 x 7 x 1 Inlet 3/4 Outlet 5/8
http://198.208.187.182/servlet/com.entigo.acdelcocatalog.servlet.ProcessImageServ let?languagecd=EN&countrycd=US&user=InternetUser&mfgname=ACDELCO&prodlinecd=15&acpartnbr=15-60143