If the blend door is broken, moving the rod isn't gonna help. If the linkage is broken, then moving the door might work..... but, you need to know what's broke.

 

how can I tell if the blend door is broken? And where is it located?

 

See my pics here with dash removed. You can make out the trans tunnel on the floor for reference. Take your time and orient yourself with pics relative to your truck, it'll begin to make sense. It's not complicated but since yours is 90% hidden behind dash it just takes awhile to get a feel for what's what.

The heat control is cable operated, white L-shaped-ish-kinda-sorta arm on top. You should be able to find it if you drop glove box

https://dodgeforum.com/forum/2nd-gen...ml#post3505515

 

Now, 2 possible options for Q&D winter solution:

1) you could try what I did in my post I linked above, ie drill a ~1/4" hole on far left (near accelerator) and shove a really long 1/4" rod in there to shove temp blend door around. If you do this be sure the "floor door" is down and out of the way or you might risk breaking that, and if it's working no sense in breaking something else.

2) you could drill a larger hole in the HVAC box near the temp blend door. I'd suggest 3/4" because that might give you a chance to glimpse something in there with a flashlight, but more because it'll afford a little room to stick a bent wire or rod or something in there at various angles and hopefully shove the door around until you get heat. It really shouldn't be too difficult to plug the hole afterward with a basic hole plug or patch and epoxy.

Obviously, neither is the "right" fix but at least you'll have heat until spring when maybe you can fix it right.

First make sure your cable isn't broken and the white arm moves with movement of the dash ****

 

so the blend door works, it moves air flow to the defrost, vents and floor. The problem is no heat. I can see the white plastic arm move when i turn the temp control.
still no heat. The link youposted is for the later models with an electric actuator, 98s and below dont have that.

 

That's not the blend door. Blend door controls temp, nothing else.

Blend door is cable operated. If it's relatively quiet, you should be able to hear thump when you go from one extreme to the other.

 

The link I posted? Absolutely not, that's a '96 of which I posted pics.

The fact that you get air thru vents as selected has nothing to do with hot/cold selection.

If you're seeing the white arm move your hot/cold blend door is likely broken.

Again, the hot/cold blend door is different than the "floor door" or vent/defrost door. I explained 'em all in my pics in the link

 

Also don't confuse electric actuators with vacuum actuators (neither of which apply to the cable operated hot/cold door '99 and down)

Vacuum is not electric. Electric is not vacuum. A cable is not either one.