Most 2002 owners know that the heater box is one of THE most
dreaded repairs. Having rebuilt mine now and watching how painful it was to
remove the spare, I can relate.
Chris Blumenthal's excellent how-to on rebuilding a heater
box is
located here on the 2002FAQ.COM site. I won't go into the complete
details because Chris has, but I will show you what I did regarding the new
parts.
Shown below in yellow are the changes. The seals are
under $3 each from BMW parts sources.
The OEM part number is 64 11 1 353 352.
Here is a closeup of the adjustment screws and control arm.
You have to eyeball this to get it close so that the slider adjustment of
the dash control closes the valve in the right location. Something tells me
I will still have to tweak mine more once the car is actually running again.
I also have a stiffener provided by 2002 Haus that helps keep
the box from breaking. You will notice this as the aluminum spacer between
the valve and the original BEHR plastic housing.
Here is a somewhat shaky photo but the whole assembly
finished.
Installing the heater box, before the wiper arm assembly was
an important discovery. I also used a modern, non porous rubber weatherproof
seal to surround the area on the firewall that the box attaches to. This was
a big upgrade from the factory open cell foam which was still very petrified
when I removed it originally. For clarity, here is the photo before the
inside was insulated to show where it's installed now.
