My 2006 Expy is having a problem. All systems for heating and air conditioning work fine, blower works fine. But Set on maximum i only get luke warm air on front drivers side. Passenger and all rear seats get normal heat. I read somewhere that there is a blend door actuator under the dash and it might not be working properly, perhaps stripped gears. Where is it, is it the problem and how do I fix it? Ideas?

 

If it were a blend door issue I would think both sides up front would be of equal temperature.

 

It must have something to do with however the dual air is controlled for the front. Two blend doors maybe, and one is broken or stuck? How does it work when set to cold?

 

If it indeed has dual air, it would've been nice for him to mention that rather important fact. Since he didn't mention it I'm going on the single zone assumption.

 

Thank you for your answers. But I am a she, not a he. My vehicle does have dual zone climate control and there are two blend doors on the plastic heater box. The vacuum actuator under the hood works perfectly. The blend door for the driver is appearently underneath the heater box - awesome. I think the door must be stuck or the acuator is just dead because their are no clicking sounds at all.

I have no intentions of pulling out the whole dashboard or paying some twerpy ford mechanic $1,000 for this so I am coming up with a solution but its not going to be easy.

Does anyone know where I can get a good parts shcematic drawing of this?

 

You may want to look into heatertreater.com. It is a repair kit that goes in through the back of the glove box. They make them for single zone for sure, that's what their business was up until dual zone. They might have a dual zone solution.

 

I found that heatertreater place on the internet and its a good solution. I have to isolate the problem first down to the door itself or the actuator. I am going to get under the dash this weekend and figure it out. Im not worried about cutting and repairing the box but just want a plan first. Im thinking to drill one or two small holes so I can see inside and figure out what is broken. It shouldnt be that hard. Other than tedious little electrical problems my expedition is an awesome vehicle and I love it to death.

 

The front blend door problems are usually the axles on the doors themselves, the rear blend door issues are the actuators.

 

No offense intended, usernames can be an abbreviation and do not necessarily reflect the user's true name. Proper English dictates the use of he/his when gender is unknown.

 

No offense taken. Just correcting. Im going to sort this out on the weekend as you have to take the scuff panel off the drivers side to see the heater box. The passenger side is easier, oh well. Ill take some pics and post them in case others need to fix this. If its the door axle I can fabricate something myself.

 

I have fixed this problem. The dual zone temperature control is accomplished with two separate acutators and two blend doors in place of the one standard large one. You gain access to the doors by cutting a hole in the heater box which is behind tghe glove compartment. In my case the passenger side door (upper) worked fine but the driver side door (lower) was stuck fully closed to the heater box. The twio doors are stacked vertically. I simply forced the drivers door open which stripped the gear connection to the actuator. I then fabricated a simple bracked to join the two doors together so the passenger side actuator moves both doors. I then foil taped the cut out back into the heater box and everything works perfectly. Total cost = $0. It took a couple of hours to do. Highly recommend the very nice man wh runs heater treater who had lost of helpful advice. I dont have dual zone climate control but I saved almost $1400 which was what the ford dealership wanted. If thw repair ever fails you can buy a single replacment door from heater treater for $120 and the actuator is another $40 or so and easy to access if you remove the centre dash console.

 

Oh yes, if you do this do not bother with the dremel tool. I just used my old fashioned soldering iron to melt the plastic. It was easy, took maybe 5-10 minutes and you dont run the risk of nicking the evaporator which is in the upper right hand of the cut.

 

Couldn't you have simply replaced the bad actuator while you were in there so as to keep the dual zone feature?

 

Its possible to replace the driver side actuator but it would be a pain. It cannot be accessed from the hole I had to cut to check the doors. It is located underneath the bottom of the box and you would have to cut through the lower heating vent on the passengers side to get to it. This repair would have been visible. It would have taken several more hours and I didnt think it was worth the trouble. I never used the dual zone feature anyway so to me it was no loss.

 

I should add though that the quality of these parts is shockingly low. Here in canada this was a $60,000 car in 2006 but the parts were as cheaply made and poorly manufactured as possible. The blend doors are the thickess of paper with the cheapest of cheap closed cell foam for sealing. I replaced that as well. The hinges are plastic and even the gear sticking out of the actuator is plastic. These parts are designed to fail and no respectable engineer would want to be associated with it. Truly sad.