Well it'd be nice if it was only the actuator, if I can even access it, but up here the weather's so cold over the winter that there won't be a time that I jump in the van that I won't need some heat. So if it's not the door spindle stripped out I can at least do a quick fix until the actuator ships in.
Now I guess I have another question regarding the actuator function itself. On the days when the system would opt to bless me with full function, the temp control worked perfectly. So I'd be driving and suddenly I'd have heat, and could control it with the twist of the temp knob. That tells me the actuator was doing its job when it decided to work. It seems if the spindle was stripped out, it may come on but wouldn't want to continue to work throughout the full temp range throughout the trip (hours or all day), that it would essentially be either on or off, assuming the flap got stuck on one end of the spectrum or the other.
Before I came here for advice, I was thinking I could hose out the switches with e-cleaner spray and that would allow the connection to work. So I guess my first question would be whether that blend flap actuator is triggered by the temp control knob or by turning on the fan. I'd have to trace the wires. The fan switch is what turns on the system itself. Turn the fan off and everything goes off. My initial analysis/speculation was that something in the fan switch wasn't triggering the system to activate, despite the fact that the fan itself was working at all speeds. There must be two wires coming off that switch, one to trigger the actuator and another to control fan speed. I was thinking I may be able to jump a hot wire to see if it activates.
All the directional functions move fine, so it'll blow defrost, floor, front panel, or a combo, so that means that blend door is working fine. The fan works fine on all speeds. The heat won't trigger on. Maybe I'll see if I can pull some of the front dash panels off to get a better look inside and underneath. Thanks
@Harley for the diagrams BTW. Much appreciated.
If that fan switch was dirty, it would make sense that it only came on rarely, but when it was left on everything else would work fine. When you shut it off and then back on again, that sensitive connection wouldn't line up and the actuator never triggered. I can play with the switch forever and it won't trigger on. But one more thing is that even if I left the system on when shutting off the motor, if I left the temp control on the cool end it may not heat back up again when I started up the engine. I had to make sure I left the heat setting around half way before shutting the engine off.
It's just been very temperamental and for the most part worked if we didn't shut it off and just let it come on when we started the motor. It worked more than it didn't. But since we didn't drive it all that often it wasn't a problem. Not until fall hit and it started getting cold again did it become a true PITA, and now it's just not tolerable which is why I've opted to have a 'van day' to work on several things at once.
Any thoughts on that switch rather than the actuator? I suppose if I can access that actuator plug I can pull it and put my meter on it to see if there's any signal coming from the switch. I'll have a look tomorrow.
Thanks again for your thoughts. I hadn't given an auxiliary heater any thought but that may work through the winter since more often than not I'm the only one in the van. I can't imagine they'd throw a lot of heat. But it sounds like I can get this done without having to pull the entire dash, so maybe I'll make it to 400k miles after all!
Let me add that I can't say enough to express how impressed I've been with that 4 cylinder motor and transmission. I pull all kinds of stuff with it and it'll go anywhere. Lots of mountain driving and extended trips and we really do enjoy driving it. I figured Daimler-Benz added some quality when they had ownership and I was lucky enough to benefit from that slot in the build quality. Before buying it I was totally off ALL American products and pretty much stuck to Toyota and German products.
