I'm trying to remove the blend door actuator so I can continue trouble shooting. Problem is, there's a floor duct in the way. I've removed the two bolts holding it, but I cannot get it out. How do I remove this thing without cutting the carpet and floor duct?

Also, before I get any further into this project I want to throw out the symptoms this has to make sure it's actually the blend door.

Here's what it does. A/C works great. Heat works not so great and only on the two lowest fan settings. When the fan is turned on high, it blows cold air.
Blend door motor turns in response to the rheostat. No plastic shavings were found on top of the actuator when I pulled it down. Is there anything else that could cause the heat to not work well?

 

certainly, low coolant level, stopped up heater core, poor coolant flow in the engine, stuck open thermostat causing low coolant temperature. You can propably tell if the blend door is opening and closing just by hearing a different sound from the air vents as it opens and closes. If the sound does not change at all then the door could very well be broken.

 

Thanks. I replaced the warm/closed potentiometer this morning and had hot air blowing for about 30 seconds and then it turned cold. It would stay cold until I turned the fan back down to low and then it blow luke warm. I have the dash torn apart now and am on the home stretch to accessing the blend door/heater core. Since I have it all torn apart, I'll be replacing both. Hopefully that will take care of it.

 

Good luck, its a big job but worth it to get it fixed right.

 

Thanks. The dash is pulled. I noticed the foam around the door leading to the two center dash vents was all messed up and was not sitting on its frame. Fixed that. Pulled the blend door and of course, it was fine. No cracks visible anywhere. I'm going to replace it and the heater core anyways since I've gone this far.

 

You should have easier access to the blend door actuator there now too, Its still tight with those extra ducts under it and in front with that blasted expedition ducting but you can work around all that

 

I pulled the actuator before I yanked the dash. What I did was cut the carpet down the center which gave me enough free play to pull the floor vent supplying the rear up high enough to pull that vent below the actuator. Once that vent was out it was easy to pull the actuator.

 

I HAVE HEAT AGAIN!!!!!! I replaced the thermostat, blend door, heater core and the actuator. The blend door was fine, no cracks present so I'm thinking heater core or actuator (though the actuator turned fine, maybe weak?) I still need to assemble the trim and I have a pretty bad coolant leak at the thermostat housing, so I'll need to take that apart again. I replaced the O-ring, so not sure what the problem is there.

I'm really glad to have it working again. Whoever the engineer was that designed this and the floor vent leading to the rear can go to H*LL!!!!! What a p.o.s. design.

 

More than a few of us who've also gone down this rabbit hole feel the same way! WTF were they thinking or smoking that day!

 

Engineers arent paid to think about how much work they are making for the technicians who have to fix their nightmares, just how many customers they can attract with all thier new bells and whistles that most owners only purchase and rarely utilize.

They have more people working to whittle down every tenth of an hour they can from the labor rate to pay the technicians who have to work on them.
Then the owners flail thier arms at how much they have to pay the tech to fix thier well hidden, extremely difficult to access components to make the repairs and though we pay through the nose for all the special tools to buy and maintain our tools we are called thieves for the price our dealerships get for the access to the techs and special equipment.

I am happy to see people fix thier own on these forums in hopes you can gain a bit of respect for what we have to do for you and guarantee the repair. We dont generally get to guess which component is bad and throw all those parts at it and get by with it.