Help! All I am getting out of my heater is hot air. It makes no difference what position my temperature control is set at. The only way I can keep hot air from coming in is keeping it at the off position. My A/C only blows luke warm because it is mixing the A/C with the heat. How do I fix it? Any suggestions?


At least I know how to fix the blower problem. Thanks for the thread on that.

I have a 1998 Ranger, manual trans, 2.5L I4, PS, PB, A/C, CD/FM/AM, 142,000 miles.

 

The temperature is controlled by a blend door in the HVAC plenum. You can access the controls for the blend door under the dash in the area forward of the glove box.

Some year Rangers have an electric motor in the actuator to control it, some years have a cable system. Ford flip-flopped on which to use in any particular year, so I'm not sure which you have.

The cable can break at high miles and the gear reduction for the small motor can do the same. Either failure means that you lose temperature control.

These are the electric type blend door actuators:


The other has this cable arrangement leading from the Temp Selector **** to the blend door:

 

Great! Thanks for the help.

 

wrong pic bob?

 

crown vic actuator mod..heh.. yeah it sounds like your blend door actuator, but what about checking the vacuum lines as well?

 

Sometimes the problem is not the actuator itself or the cable. The square fitting in the top of the blend door pivot can crack and allow the actuator's square drive to spin freely without moving the door. Here is a link to a homebrew fix for this without disassembling the dash. I haven't tried it myself but it looks like it might save a whole bunch of time and/or cash:

http://www.blenddoorfix.netfirms.com/

 

I have to say, you guys rock!

30 seconds on this site and again, I had an answer to my probelm

I recently had my heater core replaced at Fred Beans Ford in Boyertown PA.
they did a good job on the install I guess, nothing BROKEN....BUT, the mechanic(s) left the blend door cable actuator connector off at the instrument panel end.

the blend door fix above gave me the proper info needed to open the glovebox, get my hand behind the dash (luckily), fumble around blindly to find the right alignment for the **** tabs and pop the connector back on, now it works perfect.

Now FBF in Boyertown gets a polite, but disappointed customer letter on thier technicians not verifying something works fully before signing off on it, letting the customer pay them, then have the customer up to his elbows in the dash to fix something.

I was dreading taking it back to them.

heres to not sweating my *** off on the drive home this morning.

Holy crap do rangers have heat!

I moved from a 1992 gasahoggic Crown Vic police interceptor, to my 01 XLT and the CV had the worst heat ever...I'm wondering now, if the blend door was stuck mostly closed:D

 

this may be a lil offtopic but this thread is recent and you seem to know wha tyour talking about. so heres my problem.

My vents feel like hot air is coming out of them. KINDA. everything is off. if i turn heater on it blows hot air. if i turn ac on it blows cool air. everything works normal. but when everything is off. theres no fan blowing that i can here but its the kind of feeling you get when your motor is overheating or your tranny is over heating.

i was sitting in my truck and i felt hot air. i was concerned cause my windows were down. and i figured my thermo was stuck at running temp . found out the air i was feeling was coming from my vents. not hard just kinda flowing out. i have no i dea why its doing this. maybe you can help.

 

hmmmm, sounds to me like the vent switching control may not be fully shutting the airrrflow off when you put it to a "full off" setting.

I'm not familiar enough with the vacuum(I think) actuators that open and close the various doors in the HVAC system to really pinpoint this, but apparently, something is still open somewhere.

question, if you have the system "off", and the temp mix control turned to "full cool" in the blue, do you still feel a slight warm breeze,?

if so, you might have a stuck vent door, or such...possibly debris, leaves sticks??

 

hehe ....leaves or sticks ;p maybe. ill look. and YES i do still feel the warm breeze. ima go check it out right now.