I recently was driving my Spirit long distance and my AC drain spout on the firewall got plugged, sending water into my passenger's floorboard. While this was happening the air direction started to change without any switching, switching to direct air to defrost and back without any movement of the controls. Finally it stopped with it resting in the defrost when I use the AC (which I know is the default setting when the actuator is bad). The other issue is my AC engages when I switch on the air. The AC button does not turn on or off the AC. Anyone have any ideas?

 

I would start by clearing out the clog so the water can drain.

 

I did clean the clog. Actually bizarrely happened twice in a row. AC does work just directed to defrost (which is supposed to happen when the actuator fails or the vacuum is lost. Since the AC button was not turning the AC off or on thought it might be a larger symptom.

 

Update on this I SWITCHED the control panels from a '91 Spirit I also own. The same behavior appeared with transitioning between defrost-bilevel-floor does nothing. Next, I will switch actuators to see if that is the problem.