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Heater core only took a couple of hours, including the final fill with antifreeze. Not bad at all since I am a bad mechanic. Engine runs cool and the cab is hot, so I'm declaring success. If the coolant looks the least bit rusty in a couple of months I'll do another flush.
One minor battle along the way. I got 6 of the screws on the heater core cover off okay, but the 7th one was behind a wiring harness. After 5 minutes of pulling on it, I finally found the hidden secret button to get it to release. But I still couldn't get the core out because there was an electrical wire attached to the cover in two places and a mechanical control wire hooked to the cover in another place, which basically held the cover in place even without the screws. They designed it this way because they hate me. Of course the attachments were those irreversible plastic ones that auto manunfacturers are so fond of. I ended up getting one of them to pop off without breaking it (true miricle) and disconnected the control wire from the other end. After detaching those two it gave me enough slack to slide the old one out and the new one in and I was home free.
The magic connectors that the car industry uses and the contortions that you have to go through to reach stuff is the main reason I don't enjoy working on cars.
One last project with the truck: I'm up over 120K miles and still running on the original plugs, wires, and distributor cap. The ignition is getting a little sluggish, especially on rainy days. Once I fix that I should be good to go on major maintenance and repairs for quite a while.
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