After hooking up the kickdown switch I took some before shots so I knew where things were and what hardware held it in. Note the giant gap between the heater box and the defroster duct.
And the heater core housing pulled free of the dash. There are two bolts from the inside going through firewall and three studs coming from the housing and into in the engine compartment. Two of the studs are behind the passenger side cylinder head and the third is under the heater blower motor which requires the lower mounting points of the fender to be unbolted, in addition to the entire inner fender. You then put a small block of wood to hold the fender far enough out so that you can properly slit your wrists on the sharp metal while quarter turning the ratchet to remove the single nut from the stud...and the remove the lower heater core hose from the core outlet. It then promptly wedges itself into the kick panel tranny hump and lower portion of the dash.
This is something like solving one of those twisted nail puzzles where there is only one way to get the two metal pieces to unhook from each other. I found the secret: You have to first push the housing toward the driver's side (the radio removal was critical to this move), then rotate the housing so the heater core outlets face the floor while pulling the housing diagonally toward the passenger door. It takes around 10 steps of pulling one inch, rotating one inch...lather, rinse, repeat, until the whole assembly can come out of the car.
