1994 855T Finishing up Evap replacement - A last hurdle

[HMS Surprise1]

Thanks, to Chuckcintron's fabulous photographic write up I am just about to finish up replacing the evaporator and heater cores in our 1994 855T. It is definitely a big job but the write up is really a life saver. Breaking the task down in to components makes the whole process seem less daunting.

I have all the records from my car from new, and this will be the third evaporator it has seen. Consequently, the dash board and plastic bits have suffered from previous jobs. All four plastic dashboard mounting tabs were either broken completely off or were in bits. Thanks to Ozark Lee's mounting tab write up and plenty of expoy, aluminum brackets, teflon tape, etc. (just like in the pictures too!) the dash tabs were looking up to the task once more.

So this afternoon I ran in to another obstacle:

When attempting to reinstall the dashboard in the car, the upper part of the climate box (white plastic) will not sit down on the upper part of the climate box (again, the big white plastic one containing evaporator, blower motor, etc) mounted to the car. I thought it might be the black plastic alignment pin on the on the dashboard misbut that is not the culprit because it is not there anymore!

Something is not allowing the dash to sit down on the climate box and make a tight seal. The gap we're talking about is about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch. I looked over on the driver's side of the car and I noticed the dash has a black painted steel bracket that is integral with the dash and situated just over the bracket that sits above the steering column. Does the black steel bracket sit in front of behind or on top of the bracket? (This is the bracket that Chuck has you remove the left-side nut from to allow removal of a bolster bracket to allow the orange airbag wire to be moved over and down from the steering column.)

I am thinking that the black steel bracket might site on top of the bracket on the steering column because of the presence of some spongy padding on the bottom of the black bracket......

I have confirmed that no wire bundles or anything else that I can see is preventing the two climate box pieces from coming together.

Any evaporator repair veterans out there who might have run in to the same issue with re-installing the dashboard?

Again, Chuck and Ozark Lee many thanks for your great nav for these jobs.

[rspi]

These are the instructions I used:
http://volvoforums.com/forum/volvo-850- ... ions-1696/