Heater Blend Door Fix

Does your temp contol do nothing but make funny noises? Is all you get is cold air? Chances are your blend door is broken. The dealer wanted $85 an hour with a minimum of four hours just to flip it to heat for the winter. This is one easy way to fix it for the cost of a finishing nail.

Remove the radio. Insert four rods in the access holes on the face of the radio. Don’t waste your time with coat hangers. They're too thin. Use rods close to the same diameter as the four access holes. I used the ends of welding rod. You could use drill bits or Allen wrenches. Don’t push them in farther than an inch or it will never come out. Flex the rods outward, and slide out the radio.

Remove the plastic dash piece around the radio. It’s held in by clips with two screws at the bottom by the cup holder.

Remove the four screws holding in the climate control. Now you should have something resembling this.

http://webpages.charter.net/jbeck1/dash.JPG

The blend door servo motor is the white box visible behind the radio. Three screws hold it in place. Remove and inspect blend door hole. The original hole was D shaped. Study the servo motor to see exactly where to drill it. Your’s may be broken different than pictured.

http://webpages.charter.net/jbeck1/break.JPG

Drill and pin blend door motor close to the tip of the shaft. (Note, the below picture shows the first time I drilled it, I was off 90 degrees and too low.)

http://webpages.charter.net/jbeck1/nail.JPG

Correct placement for my break, after snipping off excess nail and grinding to length.

http://webpages.charter.net/jbeck1/trimed.JPG

Reassemble and check operation.

http://webpages.charter.net/jbeck1/assemble.JPG

Q. Elapsed time?
A. About an hour, depending on your luck with pulling the radio.

Q. Cost?
A. Price of a finishing nail.


This was a 97 Ford Windstar, but I also did this last year to my 97 Ford Explorer and it still works great. The only difference with the Explorer, the motor is behind the glove box.

:)

Yoopergonzo

(now warm in cold Upper Michigan)

AWESOME info!! You could make the job even easier by buying a set of DIN removal forks to pull the radio (1999+ uses double DIN). They are like $5 online, or at car stereo shops.
Thanks!

Joel

Many thanks for photos, I've had no heat for a year, but did have AC this summer. FORD wanted $1800 to fix, so now I'll take a go at it......single mom w/kids

Hey yoopergonzo say Hi to a fudgey.
I'm scannin' messages in an attempt to fix a heater problem I have with my '98 Winstar. Your repair sounds and looks great, Nice pix but I think my prob might be different and I haven't located any posts that deal directly with it. My Problem: Once the vehicle heats up and the dash temp gauge settles in at it's operating temp I only get hot air from the vents if the RPM's are reved to 2k or more. If I let the vehicle idle at it's normal 600 RPM's the blower begins to blow cold air. Example: Driving down the road I get hot air. Stopped at a red light, stop sign, etc. the blower cools down slowly to a cold blow. Keep in mind that I can adjust the vents to defrost, floor, mix, etc. which makes me think that it isn't the actuator door as you describe. Am I wrong?

Kinda sounds like a vacuum problem. I don't have my diagrams in front of me, but that's where I would look.

nice fix, wish I read this. I just dropped 850.00 for a new installed heat box. Apparently Ford recommends turning the blower off prior to changing the temperature to redcue the possibilty of door failure. I wish there was a recall. I saved my receipt.

Aside from the directional controls for the HVAC (vacuum motors that move air from dash to floor etc), there is NOTHING vacuum controls relating to hot or cold, that is all done by the temp control module (pictured above).

If your heat dies off as you sit at a light, you have either a coolant or air FLOW problem. If the heater core is covered with fuzz (dog in van etc) it wil not move enough air for you to stay warm. More likely, the core is restricting coolant flow. At higher engine speeds you get enough flow to stay warm, when you drop to idle the flow basically stops and you cool off.

Low coolant level can also cause this, but I figure you would have checked that already.

Guys! I found a kit that repairs the broken blend door problem with no dash removal and takes about an hour. The kit is called the HeaterTreater and they have installation videos on youtube. check it out: www.heatertreater.net