You can actually re-use the old black "putty" stuff quite easily.
I simply placed the old sealant in a metal pan and heated it with a heat gun for a few minutes and it became nice and soft and pliable and also horribly sticky.... You will want to wear disposable surgical gloves when working with it.
Just heat it up till its soft and pliable, then take a nice wad of it and "smoosh" it around each exaporator tube where it exits the blower housing. Mold it around a little so that it fully blocks any air gaps between the tube and the plastic housing.
If you find you don't have enough of the stuff, you can get tons of it for nothing at any salvage yard out of other cars.
The other neat thing about heating it up, kneading it around and re-using it is that it looks like new again... ------------------
[This message has been edited by randye (edited 08-23-2012).]
Pulled a vacuum this afternoon, and I am good to go here. WIll add in a new accumulator and vacuum it down once again. Maybe tomorrorw.
Let that vacuum pump run for a good LONG time. (1 hour wouldn't hurt) You need to get every molecule of water vapor you can out of that system and the longer you let it run the better off you will be. Good Luck!
Good idea, I was bored so decide to finish my A/C removal today look what I found...... Bout 3 inches thick of crap.
You got it this far apart, I recommend removing the evaporator and using brake cleaner to remove the 20+ years of tar, nicotine, oil, wax, dirt, mold, fungus and other crud that has ended up on the outside surface. I wish I had done this to mine.
[This message has been edited by josef644 (edited 08-26-2012).]
got a + from me too. got bored with interior so i took mine out. there was a softball size gob of leaves and helicopter things in it. since i hate a/c i ditched mine too and thanks for the putty info lol i was trying to think of a way to plug that hole all day
I took my resistor out and stuck my fingers in there...I has mistakenly assumed that since the area around the blower motor was free of debris, the evaporator would be clean too.
Pulled about five handfuls of leaves and dirt out of there!
If I ever need to recharge my A/C this thing is coming out for a real cleaning. Thanks for the tip.
Would've been an interesting picture I imagine... if the image(s) still existed. This is why so many of us promote the use of PIP here.
I wanted to clean out the blower box in my newly acquired '88 Formula last year and this is what I found. I'm another person here who hates A/C, so I removed all A/C components... including the evaporator pictured below.
Was at the local Advance Auto tonight...R134 is now 19.99 a can.
Propane anyone ?
Hey guys, its 2018 and I picked up 3 cans of R134 at Mills Fleet Farm for $5 per can. Oreillys still has it for 9.99. It pays to shop around if you want to save $20-$30.
Sometime last driving season I found a dead mouse on the floor mat of my 84 SC car. No big deal, got him out of there, replaced the floor mats, looked under the seats for more mouse problems, nothing else found! Well, this spring we drove the car for a Sunday drive. Had to turn the heater on. Wasn't long before the windows were open because of the horrible dead mouse smell. So, finally today I pulled the heater motor to find the rear quarters of a dead mouse as well as a mouse nest in the fan squirrel cage. After some probing I found the rest of the mouse as well as a lot of junk against the evaporator. Cleaned everything out and sprayed, wiped down with Lysol. Hope this solves the stench problem, otherwise there may be a Fiero for sale. Not that anyone would want it with the nasty aroma.
Yeah, this thread is old, but Fiero a/c evaporators don't change.
I am currently restoring my a/c system. Because of this thread, I took the trouble to inspect my evaporator. I initially used an inspection mirror and light through the resistor pack opening.
Sheesh, what a mess. I am glad I looked.
No leaves or mouse nests but I had that thin layer of brown crud blocking airflow. I removed the accumulator, washer tank, resistor pack, blower fan and all the sheetmetal screws holding the cowling to the firewall. I removed the black "tar" stuff on the top and bottom of the evaporator tubing. I tried pulling the evaporator cowling away from the front bulkhead, as shown in earlier posts here, but I could NOT get it to pull away from the bulkhead on the passenger side. I could not figure out what was holding it up.
I could get enough room on the driver's side to slide in a light and illuminate the front side of the evaporator. I put my large inspection mirror into the resistor pack opening.
I tried rubbing off the brown crud off of the evaporator fins using a toothbrush (an old one; not my wife's) to gently brush the crud. It came off quite easily actually. I brushed some then used my small shopvac to remove debris as if fell to the bottom. Encouraged, I brushed more and more of the evaporator. Eventually, I added extra length to the toothbrush handle to get into the far corners of the evaporator still through the resistor pack opening. I could see via my inspection mirror that I had done the whole thing. I then blew off the entire evaporator with compressed air through the crack at the top of the cowling and through the resistor pack hole. In the end, the evaporator was startlingly clean.
I document these details to show that it is possible to clean the evaporator without removing much. It certainly was slow and a pain in the neck, but I am satisfied with the result. There is a ton of air blowing through the evaporator now.
How do all the leaves get into the evaporator box? Where is the unscreened opening?
Some bits and pieces do make their way down through small openings in the cowl area... but I suspect the worst messes are created by mice that decide to set up shop after crawling up through the bottom of the cowl drain tubes.
[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 05-20-2025).]
Some bits and pieces do make their way down through small openings in the cowl area... but I suspect the worst messes are created by mice that decide to set up shop after crawling up through the bottom of the cowl drain tubes.
Several of the photos earlier in this thread show major accumulations of leaves. It doesn't look like mouse stuff. There must be a big hole somewhere.
Several of the photos earlier in this thread show major accumulations of leaves. It doesn't look like mouse stuff.
Don't mice drag stuff to where they wish to make a home? I'm not saying that every leaf found inside a Fiero's HVAC system has been put there by a mouse, but I stand by what I earlier stated that the "worst messes" are created by mice.
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This is why so many of us promote the use of 
