My HVAC unit was blowing hot and cold air and to all the right vents but hardly any air was coming out. I've completely removed the dashboard and I have determined that the problem was that my recirculation door had broken and the hinge and fallen over the blower motor air inlet blocking the air from getting in to the duct system.

I cut away the grid over the cabin inlet side of the housing to remove the broken door. To remove the recirculation housing requires removing the entire HVAC duct housing which requires removing the PCM to get to bolts behind it and draining the radiator coolant and the A/C refrigerant system. I determined that I could just replace the door and epoxy the cabin air inlet grid back on and be good to go. Plus, in my opinion, it's hard to ever get an refrigerant recharge to ever be as good as the factory original charge and you're air never gets quite as cold.

I went to the dodge dealership this morning and found out that Dodge had redesigned the entire recirculation housing and that you cannot order just the recirculation door, you had to buy the whole housing with door and actuator included. They actually had it in stock and I was shocked when it was only $70.

I've looked at the new housing and I'm not 100% sure the doors are exactly the same in the way they attach to the actuator and I'm afraid I might break something if I try to get the door out of the new housing.

So that's where I'm at. Here is what I am considering, let me know what you think.

I am thinking just put everything back together and just leave the inlet from both the outside air and the cabin air wide open and do not reinstall a recirculation door. I am thinking that since the blower motor is a squirrel cage type fan having double the inlet opening should not create a problem by having too low an inlet pressure cause a loss in blower outlet air velocity. I believe that these centrifugal type blower/compressors are out put limited by housing size and rotating speed and not greatly affected by inlet size or inlet pressure.

What do y'all think?

If leaving both inlets wide open would cause a drop in the velocity of the air coming out of the blower motor then I could just epoxy the broken recirculation door over the outside air inlet and only run cabin air. (Which I usually run recirculated cabin air about 90% of the time as it is)

What is the consensus of the dodge forum brain trust???

 

Have you checked out the Heater Treater videos on Youtube ? Also check out heatertreater.net

 

I had not seen that, but thanks for sharing Mongo. If my blend door breaks then I'll replace all the doors using those metal heater treater doors.

But for right now there seems to be no way to open the duct assembly without completely removing it and I am trying to avoid that. I need to have the truck back together by Wednesday night so I can drive it 650 miles to Cincinnati on Thursday.

After reading through the heater treater website it though I think I'll just epoxy or super glue the broken recirculation door up against the outside air inlet. They talked about how if the recirculation door was broken and hanging loose it feels like a window is cracked and you can feel outside air coming in down in the passenger foot.