A/C problem
Thread Starter
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2
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A/C problem
99 durango, 5.9 v8,
Hi all. I have an A/C problem i'm hoping someone can shine some light on.
Compressor works fine, all line are cold all the way until the firewall, the rear a/c blows cold air. But it blows warm air in the front. I was told to hit the valve at the firewall lightly with a hammer, that didn't do it. So i also heard there is a door that is vacuum activated that could be stuck. How do i find this, or check to see what is wrong. Please help, any help will be greatly appreciated.
Hi all. I have an A/C problem i'm hoping someone can shine some light on.
Compressor works fine, all line are cold all the way until the firewall, the rear a/c blows cold air. But it blows warm air in the front. I was told to hit the valve at the firewall lightly with a hammer, that didn't do it. So i also heard there is a door that is vacuum activated that could be stuck. How do i find this, or check to see what is wrong. Please help, any help will be greatly appreciated.
Professional
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 153
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From: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
RE: A/C problem
Nope...do none of the above...I have a 1999 5.9l D and I live in Saudi Arabia where A/C is errrr...a matter of some importance...
It is almost certainly due to the well know "blend door" issue that plague D's.
The "blend door" is a flap that is connected, via a cable control, to the rotary temperature dial on the control panel. This flap blends the air flow from the passenger compartment heater (a small radiator that is fed by two pipes that disappear into the firewall on the driver side of the engine compartment) and the A/C radiator (that is fed by pipes from the A/C compressor on the passenger side).
All this takes place in a huge plastic box, that takes most of the room up behind the dashboard, and then feeds the air to the airvents.
The fact that you have cold air coming out of the roof mounted A/C makes all this a virtual certainty...
The problem is that the blend door sticks in position after a time and does not close properly to let cold A/C air though. This sticking can be due to the cable connector "bunching up" and not transmitting enough force to the door and/or dust etc preventing smooth movement of the door itself.
The solution, short of removing the complete airbox from the vehicle - a massive task is as follows:
a) Remove rotary control **** from facia and push/pull cable connector to try and get it to loosen up
b) Use an air line and try to blow dust and associated cr*p out of the airbox and see if that loosens up the door
c) Disconnect the heater by bypassing it just where the lines go into the firewall - just join them together
Hope this all helps....Chris
It is almost certainly due to the well know "blend door" issue that plague D's.
The "blend door" is a flap that is connected, via a cable control, to the rotary temperature dial on the control panel. This flap blends the air flow from the passenger compartment heater (a small radiator that is fed by two pipes that disappear into the firewall on the driver side of the engine compartment) and the A/C radiator (that is fed by pipes from the A/C compressor on the passenger side).
All this takes place in a huge plastic box, that takes most of the room up behind the dashboard, and then feeds the air to the airvents.
The fact that you have cold air coming out of the roof mounted A/C makes all this a virtual certainty...
The problem is that the blend door sticks in position after a time and does not close properly to let cold A/C air though. This sticking can be due to the cable connector "bunching up" and not transmitting enough force to the door and/or dust etc preventing smooth movement of the door itself.
The solution, short of removing the complete airbox from the vehicle - a massive task is as follows:
a) Remove rotary control **** from facia and push/pull cable connector to try and get it to loosen up
b) Use an air line and try to blow dust and associated cr*p out of the airbox and see if that loosens up the door
c) Disconnect the heater by bypassing it just where the lines go into the firewall - just join them together
Hope this all helps....Chris
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
RE: A/C problem
I am having exact same problem....2000 Durango SLT. Warm up front, ice cold in the rear....pipes are freezing cold all the way to fire wall up front as well as under the vehicle to the behind pass. seat where they go up to rear. I took about 60% of the dash apart to try to follow the swing door cable....end result was it was working fine. Don't get me wrong...the previous post about the swing door is a famous Dodge problem and I was willing to bet that was what it was too (and it could still be your issue)...but my luck isn't that good......Aftergiving up on that I"accidently" broke off corner of squirel cagecover found behind glove box...ok, after 3 hours of getting pissed offtrying to fix something that should be simple if I couldjust get my handson it because they couldn't put in a simple acces panel... soIpulled up on the cornerof the plastic as hard as I could until it snapped off a chunk and made my own access panel.Nothingthat a little duct tape didn't fix and it isn't visible behind glove box so who cares....hell of lot easier then pulling anymore dash apart...Anyway, if you are sitting in pass. seat...the cover is all the way to your right, behind glove box.....the round hump covers fan...and next to it (toward driver side) is square box that houses the evaporator (small radiator that is suppose to get ice cold and then cold air from fan blows over....I,m sure you know the rest). The goodnews is thatby doing this it exposed enough of the evaporator that I could touchit and feel thatit wasn'tcold at all....not even cool. I finally gave up and took it to the shop this morning....it turns out it is in fact a bad H-Block (they say there are small valves inside that eitherstick or clog)...bottom line, part is about $110.00(plus labor).Hope this helps.
