I have read several posts about bad blend doors and just finished up changing one on my 97 Explorer. All-in-all, it was pretty easy. I ordered the replacement door from O'Reilly's for $8.49 and proceeded to start cutting the plenum. I am trying to enhance on the posts here from what I experienced.

First, drop the glove box and take it off with the 3 screws holding it onto the dash assembly. I then took a white paint marker and traced the outline of where I was going to cut. I used a generic dremel with the flexible cable attachment and cut-off wheels. Looking at the plenum, I removed the face of the top half and used a little prying to separate it at the split line. Then on the left side cut down from the split line to the bottom of the plenum and back towards the radio a couple of inches, creating, essentially a flap. The blend door can now be seen behind and to the right of the heater core.

Second, I traced a triangular shaped peace to cut out on the bottom of the plenum. LEAVE the plastic that holds the depression for the bottom pivot point of the door. One suggestion had you remove this pivot point, drop the door and put it back. I would strongly suggest leaving the pivot point in place and making an access hole near it. If you try to reinstall the piece with the pivot point could be difficult at best- it would have to be spot-on so the door actuates correctly.

Pry out what's left of the old door, as written in the other detailed explanation, pitch the top of the door to the left, kick the bottom out to the right, feed it around the heater core, and pry back the flap you made in the lower plenum so you can slide to door out. Reverse this step for the new door, BUT FIRST- check for FOD in the plenum and especially the lower pivot point with a mirror.

Now, set the door to a middle position and set the temperature **** to the middle and re-install the blend door motor. Check for proper actuation of the blend door and you're done. Remove the flashing from your cut plenum pieces and re-install. I used duct tape for now, gorilla tape would be good too. I taped the bottom piece up FIRST so I could watch the door move and check for binding. Then I put some RTV on the front piece along the bottom and duct tape along the seams. Re-install the glove box and you're done. Elapsed time was about three hours, but a lot of that was planning versus execution.

Thanks for the others who posted and pointed me in the right direction, I hope this adds some insight to help speed the job along.

 

thats great news. should work for a truck a couple years older, to a couple years newer than yours. for several years the door was behind the glove box. about 2001-2002 thy put the door and air duct under the radio, above the trans hump.