Whew. It's been a while. I would not trust my memory to recite exactly what I did to make this all work. However I do have a picture of the harness I made to make this all possible. You can see the three temperature probes, the 6pin plug for the passenger actuator and the 2 leads with pins (purple and yellow) that I added to the existing sunload sensor plug. Again, if i remember correctly the plug for the single zone and dual zone sunload sensors are the same, except that the dual zone sunload sensor has all 4 pins used in the plug and the single zone configuration just uses 2 pins. I think in all I only had to spice into a couple wires for all this to work. The rest of the connections were just made in the form of adding pins to existing plugs. I would highly recommend purchasing a quality wiring diagram. Lastly source your plugs and bare harness from ebay off a wrecked f150, thats what I did and it saved a pile of money. Good luck.

 

I just use the fan as a controller as to how cold it gets in the cab, leave the AC on, always, and control the tempts with the fan, as to how cold it gets in the cab... The Ac will control itself, if the fan is on low it will just switch on less, if the fan is oh high it will switch on more often and longer... As I see it ... Just thinking outside of the box... Guess what, cheap & easy, and the same result, IMO...

 

I gotcha. Yeah, if it works for you then that's all that matters. I will say after this mod I rarely touch my HVAC controls. Maybe once out of every 7-8 trips I will tick the **** down/up one degree to beat the occasional hysteresis of the cabin temperature probe.

 

So you're saying if I set the temp dial to where it's comfy for me on a 80 degree day, it'll automatically stay comfy on a 95 degree day? I had no idea it worked that way. Seems to completely defeat the purpose of the temp dial.

 

It's been long enough now that I can confirm it does not work like that. At least not on a 2019 it doesn't. If I set the temp to a comfy level today, it'll roast me or freeze me out of the truck tomorrow. There is no sensor doing any calculation on the trucks with the manual HVAC.

Unfortunately it also looks like I cannot add auto climate control because I haven't found a thread yet where somebody had luck retrofitting that on a XLT that came with the itty bitty screen.

 

Any updates to this?

I'd love to do single zone auto (in my XLT w/premium package)... From manual. But also wondering what happens to my heated seat control since it's no longer on the a/c controls... But part of the cooled seat/heated seat controls (I don't have cooled seats) in the Lariat.

Do tell!

 

Me too. Would LOVE to do auto climate control on my XLT, even if it's single zone.

 

(I know it's an old thread, but it was on par with what I wanted to accomplish - however, my truck being a 2020)

Okay folks....

Spent some time with the Lariat "auto" climate control bezel, installing it into my XLT with original manual climate control... and, used forscan to get me a climate tab on my screen since there was none. Enabled items in several modules as necessary, and wow... the Lariat auto bezel works!!! I had a dual temp setting readout on the climate tab, however had it set to single zone. Really worked great!! Just what I was after!

However, not completely. Here's what I found;

The temperature read 30° when it was 72° outside. It was looking for another interior/exterior sensor or two and threw DTCs since there wasn't one. If I reconnected the XLT bezel, no problem. Temp reading was back to normal.But then, the climate screen was no longer able to set to 'auto' nor a 'set temp' on either side (driver or passenger).

I do have heated seats, and with the Lariat bezel... they won't work. It's not a plug and play solution to get them to work either. As I read on an F150 forum... there's quite extensive work/parts to get them the heated seats to work properly. In working with Forscan, I did enable the heated seats for showing on my home screen (as an icon) and that works great. But ONLY with the manual climate XLT bezel.

If there's anyone who's made the heated seats work in an XLT using Lariat bezel, and has the wire harness and part numbers to install along with the proper temp sensors... this would be a great swap. But, I'm not that saavy and surely don't have the time to figure it out. If you have... and are willing to make a buck, private message me!! I'm all ears.

(sorry, no pictures as I was barely awake doing this late into the night... in my spare time... LOL)

 

Ok I really want to dig into the auto climate control even if just single zone for my 18 F350 XLT because this just came to the top of my wish list:

https://www.fordsync4.com/products/2...49219804856610


I found a great video on PTT on how to add the heated steering wheel, now it's figuring out auto climate then heated and cooled seats before I can start pulling the trigger on parts.

I figure it will cost $3-4k by the time I'm all done but I just paid my truck off and it only has 100k miles so if I can get this all figured out I'm keeping it for at least another 100k.

 

Good luck!! I came on here asking for help, and there's really only one of two who have done it successfully with a newer truck. They ended up having to make their own wiring harness, pin the new wiring into the OEM Ford connectors, and add modules/sensors/etc into the ductwork for dual or single zone. It's surely not a "plug and play" mod for any truck.

I still have my Lariat bezel, and would love to make it work... but, without help I just don't know where to start.

I might have to watch the heated steering wheel how-to, as I live where it can get down to 25° at times and the wife's car has a heated steering wheel... super nice. We'll see if it's worth the added cost for me.

... let us know what you find, I'd even love to pay someone to complete a harness and tell us/me which parts to buy. I'm capable of the install, just not figuring out the circuits and mods needed.

 

I know this post is old, but this guy makes the harnesses you need to get the heated seats working. https://www.bigbluecustomdesigns.com...18---2020-f150

 

Cudos to you guys for figuring it out and going to all the effort. I just tell my wife to adjust the AC outlets....

Dave