Need heat

I am going to replace the heater core in my 1988 Chevy 1500 single cab V8. Any advice as far as what to do and what not to do (tricks of the trade) to make this go smoothly would be appreciated.

Is the core leaking, or do you suspect is it plugged?

I'm not necessarily advocating this route, but here's the easiest and fastest way which I followed on my '88 Silverado. Take out the screws holding the plastic air handler under the dash on the passenger side (all the screws you can get to on the bottom side.) Pull on it some to see where it is held in by then etch the plastic all the way across up near the top. Pull until it breaks, remove the section, unhook the core from inside the engine compartment and pull it out from under the dash. If you break the section fairly smoothly as I've done on two different trucks, it will go back together and will seal fine by just screwing it back in place (the existing screws, won't need anything else.) This obviates taking parts of the dash, glovebox, computer, etc out to get to all of the screws and do it the right (couple hours versus 20 minutes) way. It's a down and dirty way but you don't see it, it only handles air for the cab and will split cleanly. Worst case, a little epoxy puts it back together in a place not visible nor functional. Why the General didn't make it two pieces to start with to make life easier is just one of those questions you'd like to beat an engineer over the head with.