After many years of driving, my air conditioning on my 2012 F150 has finally decided to fail in a rather expensive way. I recently had an issue with it and got the expansion valve replaced. Had working air conditioning for a couple weeks but I am now back to feeling the full brunt of the mid-August heat. Brought it back in to a local mechanic and they confirmed it was the evap core. They stressed that while the part isn't too expensive, the labor is very time consuming as the whole dash needs to come off and quoted me a little under 2 grand.

But, this is a 2012 truck with visible rust (midwest winters) and about 175k miles. I would rather not sink so much money into it when I can instead spend an inordinate amount of my time on it. As such, I'll be taking a stab at replacing the evap core myself. Since this is such an involved task, I'd rather only take the dash off once. I intend to replace the heater core while I am in there but also wanted to see what else I should be checking and potentially replacing and if there are any brands of parts I should stick to or avoid. I also have the issue of flushing, vac testing, and refilling the system afterwards. I intend to ask my mechanic if they are willing to do so and will likely go that route if it isn't inordinately expensive, but also want to hear if I have any better options.

And at the end of the day, is this actually worth trying? I have heard horror stories of people pretty much turning these replacement cores into a regularly replaced part and at that point I'd rather just upgrade to a newer truck. Would it still be worth it then to attempt the fix, get it working enough to trade in, then trade up?

 

honestly, 2 grand for evap replacement isn't that bad at all IMO.

How much longer do you intend to keep the truck?

Not sure about where you live but here, we are starting to get to the tail end of AC season

 

You're definitely right in terms of pricing. The quote seems pretty fair compared to others I have seen while looking into this. However, I am just wrapping up grad school and would rather spend a lot of time than that 2 grand.

Ideally I would like to drive this truck until it rusts through too much or the reliability drops off enough to warrant a new truck. Hoping that takes at least another 5-6 years. It is convenient the hot weather is nearing its end but I'd like to tackle this before winter rather than waiting until the warm weather comes back.

 

if you do decide to tackle it yourself while you are in there i would replace the blend door actuators, the air inlet door assembly (the door itself loves to break and that's a dash out repair as well) stay with ford parts

@AppleFordParts can get you hooked up