Why so much to fix my Heat?

Well, actually that question didn't pop up in this particular case because the Vehicle owner had an aftermarket Warranty. But that made it worse because this particular Warranty company will pay for ONLY what's needed NOW. More on this later.

Subject Vehicle is a 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 Pick-up Truck.
The Customer concern was that the Heat did not work right.
Upon inspection we found that the Airflow was way out of kilter.
When checking we found that there was only a very small of air coming out of the Defrost Duct and Floor Duct, all the time, even with the Blower on High! It didn't even try to change when any of the other Modes were selected.
And the air was barely luke-warm.

When troubleshooting this fully Electronically Controlled HVAC Systems' Controls, it was determined that the Defrost/Floor Mode Door was unresponsive, probably a broken Door as this is a Common Problem on this Year/Make/Model (Y/M/M) . In fact, ALL of the Mode Doors on this Y/M/M have a history of breakage but the Def/Floor Door is the most common and Dodge has upgraded the Door and Lower case.

Further testing revealed that the Heater Core was also internally restricted.

OK, so far these findings explain the Def/Floor not changing and the air not being heated enough but we still didn't know why the airflow was so weak and farther testing was getting us nowhere.

We filed a claim with the Warranty Company and asked them to leave the Claim "open" because we would need to perform more inspection and testing when we got the HVAC Case out and dis-assembled.


This is not the correct illustration for this Y/M/M but's the only one I could find on short notice. It does give a good idea about the airflow through a typical HVAC Case thugh.










This is why it's so expensive to fix the HVAC when the Case needs to be removed.
The entire Dash, instrument Panel and Steering column need to removed to gain access to the Case.
After that we still had work to remove the Case.










Here is a view of the Dash, Instrument Panel and Steering Column laying on the floor next to the work bench.













The HAVC Case is then disassembled for farther inspection and testing and later repair.
















Yikes! We found not just one but TWO broken mode Doors! Pictured here is one of the Mode Doors.
If you look at the top-right you'll be able to see the plastic simply snapped at the upper hinge.

And what about that pesky low airflow condition? Well, the other broken Door was the Fresh air/Recirculation Door. When broke, it fell down onto the Blower Motor inlet effectively sealing out nearly any air intake at all. Sorry I didn't get a pic of that one, had to get back to work...




Here is larger view of one of five Electric Actuators that drive the Mode Doors in both directions and stop at whatever position the Computer decides.











Oh yeah, why did I mention that this particular Warranty Company just makes things worse?
Because these Y/M/M has known problems with this issue *and* this Vehicle obviously will break the other Doors in the future it would be just plain SMART to replce ALL of the Doors now while it is apart and save any future costs of the high labor bill to do this again.
They denied the claim for the other doors "because they are not broken"

And the Customer did not want to pony-up the bucks either because it would be covered again by the Warranty Company.

SHEESH!!! What a waste of money when the others fail...

Enjoy,

Mike.







Michael E. Nixon All rights reserved