How bad of a job is pulling the dash out of an 01 Durango?
AC evaporator is shot

Done it twice on Dakota's for heater cores. Tedious but not too bad in my opinion. 2nd set of hands to help you set the dash out would be a plus. The first one I just cocked it back on the seats and worked around it. 2nd one I spent the extra few minutes to get it out of the way.



Tim

I did my 99 Dakota a few years ago, this one seems to have more to it than that one did. The 99 was still vacuum actuated blend doors and such, the 01 is electric motor actuated. But even beyond that it seems like there's more crap in the way on this one. I'll get to know later today after work

I had to replace the heater core in my 04 Dakota quad cab. I just laid it back on the seat and had just barely enough room to get the heater box out over the top of it and out the passenger side door. 2 things I would recommend would be change both the evaporator core and the heater core while you are in there, and to set the heat/AC controls at a certain place of your choosing and then take pics of all of the electric servos before taking the box apart to fix it. The heater hose tubes that go into the heater core are about the dumbest design I've ever seen! Good luck with it. To me, the hardest part was getting the thing unbolted on the engine compartment side.

I didn't have any problem with that. I have the 360, though I did go to a junkyard and looked at a few with 4.7s, damn I'd have had to pull the engine out to get at the 4 nuts that go thru the firewall.
As it was I only had an issue with 1 of the 4. I had to unscrew the trans dipstick from the back of the head to get at that one.
I'm 3 days into a "5 hour" job according to Mitchell.
That includes a trip to an LKQ (never again, Sunday or not) they changed their prices drastically. An automatic add of 40% for a "90 day warranty" and the b!tch tried to charge me separate for the heater core, the evaporator and 5 blower motors (each actuator is a "blower motor") so i went outside and pulled off the wiring harness and left the rest on the counter.
For that wiring harness, a air cleaner assembly and a factory Durango radio it cost me $84 to get outta there. I was blown away. If I would have taken that "heater box ASSEMBLY" it would have been $200 just for that.
I just wanted the housing because of a couple of cracks, which I JB welded instead, (which accounts for most of the time spent) and because I have been fighting a "won't blow air out the floor vents" for years.
I had already bought new evaporator and new heater core, and new actuators. I pd $31 ea for the actuators at O'Reilly's the junkyard would have wanted $23 each for their used ones. Screw that.
I wanted the wiring harness because I've replaced the blower motor resistor pigtail so many times I was left with nubs.... And had to cut the connector for the blower motor when I replaced that the first time about 5 years ago. Everything on mine is brand new now except the plastic housing itself.
What a rube Goldberg setup for the linkage to open the various blend doors on that thing jeez..... I've fought with that over the years on mine too (another reason I wanted to start with a different housing)

Those early 88-96 Dakotas were so simple to work on compared to the 97 and on "improved models".