MACS Service Reports - 2016 - SEP3

OTHER DETAIL PARTS
Other detail parts to keep in mind are for these problems:

move the blend-air door itself back and forth by hand.
The root cause is a broken tab on the door's lever bushing. Technicians have jury-rigged repairs but it's a lot
simpler with a new bushing, which VW made available
as a detail part (No. 1H-0819). ■

Paul Weissler

* the dented underbody refrigerant line.
This is most common for the vehicles with
rear A/C, when a rock hits the line, or weak
shocks allow enough suspension travel to
allow some physical contact with the road
or the underbody. If you do encounter this,
you'll find that the OE service part is a completely new line, perhaps sold in a few sections. But if the dent is confined to a small section, cutting it out and closing the gap with a
swage-on connector from Lokring (lokring.
com) or AGS (agscompany.com) Kledge-Lok;
or a compression fitting connector from AirSept (airsept.com).
* broken HVAC case flap doors (Fig. 4).
There's an assortment of repair kits. Heatertreater.net has the biggest assortment, covering a list of many Ford trucks and Ford/
Lincoln SUVs, Taurus/Sable, Mark LT and
Windstar, plus Chevrolet/GMC pickups and
SUVs, Jeeps, and Dodge Ram, plus a "universal kit". AirSept.com has less-invasive kits,
but to date only for some F-150, Explorer,
Jeep Grand Cherokee and Equinox/Torrent.
These kits are designed for "on vehicle" installation, so are worth considering.
And finally (for this report), we'll note a detail part repair for 2002-04 Volkswagen Jetta/Golf and the Beetle.
The problem is loss of temperature control, despite the
fact that the technician can operate the dashboard control
(but no movement of the blend-air door. And he also can

Figure 4: Numerous flap door repair kits have been introduced in recent years
to permit in-car repair without pulling dashboard and other time-intensive operations. This Ford F-150 kit from AirSept uses a repair sleeve over the flap door
shaft, and actuator is ready for installation.

IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS

Although most technicians realize that the "manual HVAC" systems in passenger cars are electrical
with some electronic controls, they often have a different impression of the HVAC systems in pickup
trucks. This is particularly true of the compact
pickups with what appear to have manual A/C, as
basic systems. We suspect the reason is that pickups stay in service for many years and as a result
technicians see a lot of the really older models.
Well, we've said it often enough: except for an occasional model, like a Jeep Wrangler, all these "basic"
vehicles are largely electronic - no more cables
and conventional blower resistors. Hey wait, even
with a Jeep Wrangler, you have to go all the way
back to 2009 model year to find a resistor block and
also cable controls in the HVAC case.

September 2016

The Nissan Frontier compact pickup (and its offroad brother the Xterra) are other vehicles technicians often put in the basic category. The model
under discussion is a 2012 Frontier with the 4.0-liter V6, and the problem was that the system only
worked on low blower. Yes, the compressor engaged and the system produced cold air, but not on
any other blower settings.
This puzzled the technician because he still was
mentally in the resistor era, often with the high
blower relay, and he just couldn't see the resistor
allowing just low blower. He "suspected" the blower "resistor" simply because everything else seemed
to be working. When he checked for bad connections, blown fuses, defective blower switch, etc. he
replaced the "resistor," and the system worked fine.

MACS Service Reports

http://www.agscompany.com http://www.airsept.com http://www.treater.net http://www.AirSept.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of MACS Service Reports - 2016