NB heater core - best way?

 Online says the job is pretty straight forward, EXCEPT for getting the pipes hooked up with the little clamps. 

Any tips for getting them on there without cutting them and using sections of heater hose as joints?

Why are we cutting things? What are we cutting?

I'm not intending to, thus the hope for a bulletproof tip to get them reconnected in minutes, not hours. 

Apparently getting those pipes back in while working under the dash can be a real bear, and some guys use the USMC method of adapt and overcome.

Make sense?

I'd just pull the dash. It's not that difficult. I suspect this is one of those situations where trying to do something the "easy" way is much harder than trying to do it right.

I have much fear of dash pulling.

Visions of half a day just to get it out, nevermind the pitfalls of reassembly, things impossible to reattach correctly, etc., are dancing through my head. 

And it looks like getting the heater core itself in and out is fairly facile. 

'Splain, Lucy.

I've had the dash in and out on a Friday night, working solo. And that was my first time. It's designed to come out :) It's basically just disconnecting a bunch of wiring and then knowing where all the fasteners are. I've never struggled to put it back together. Let me know if you need a copy of the factory service manual to help.

I've never tried to pull the heater core out separately, but given the location there's not going to be a lot of room to work. Your concerns of things that are impossible to reattach seem like they'd be much higher if you were trying to do it all with the dash in place. You do want to be careful not to damage the hard pipes coming out of the core, they are easily crunched.

I understand that dash removal may be more difficult in other vehicles, but I'm talking about Miatas because this is a Miata :)

Watching a vid now, so far just a lot of steps, and the vid is 40 min long (probably just taking it out, and usually the caveat is "assembly is the reverse of these steps"). 

That's not terrible if its as easy as all that. 

We'll see.