lgrant

For 1997+ XJs:

I'm trying to figure out my poor cabin heat problem and most of the discussion is in another thread. When plowing through the blend door possibilities, I ran into a very helpful thread on another forum and I thought it would be useful as a seperate thread for this forum. So it is shown below. But before that imported thread, one can do a prelim test of the blend door actuator without disassembly from the airbox. With key on, just cycle between cold and hot and vice versa and while doing that, hold you finger on the bottom of the vertical blend door pivot, which is in the middle of the actuator module (I believe 97s and 98s are different). If the actuator is not totally dead, you can feel the pivot turn with you finger. Mine turned and seemed to have a good range, so I did not disassemble and moved on to the suggestions in the other forum thread. Instead of a 1" hole followed by a 2" hole, I used a hole saw to cut a 1.5" hole - it took about 5 seconds (setup took much longer, about 2 minutes). That turned out to be sufficient to see, with a flash light, the operation of the blend door. As it turned out my blend door, like Doc's, was working just fine as far as I could tell. One could see it pushed up against the inside opening when on full hot (I think) and you could put you finger in the hole and feel it pushed up against the other stop when the temp dial was rotated the other way ("cold" I think). While the door is probably not as good as when it left the assembly plant, it's good enough to give me good A/C and therefore should not be the problem for the poor heat. I taped up the hole with Gorilla duct tape and also taped the wiring harness back to the air box.



Other forum post (edited):
March 5th, 2015, 13:33
Re: 97 and up blend door fix and information

I had a low heat issue in my 2000 classic. Was hoping the blend door was not the culprit.

My brother called me and gave me some good info that saved me a lot of time and damage to my duct box. Take out the glove box and you'll see the end of the area where the AC coil is, just left of center. There is a slight 'step' back where the coil stops on the left hand side. A bundle of wires are attached with a plastic push pin like used on auto trim. If you take that bundle of wires out you can use that hole as a guide point to make a 1" or so hole to put your finger in and feel around from left to right and from top to bottom on the back side of this plastic duct housing. Be careful anyway. I used a occilating saw, the vibrating kind?

You should feel nothing behind this plastic side. Cut a 2x2 inch hole with the original push pin hole being your guide for the center of this hole. I'd recommend making this 2" layout before you do any cutting so that you know for certain where the hole was in the first place. You can make it bigger from top to bottom but from side to side, 2" is about it, maybe 3" if you were really patient. Put your flash light close to the hole and operate the blend door. It's so easy to see if it works or not, it's ridiculous. Mine works fine.

CYa
thanks bunches from you all.
Doc

ElMartillo

I was about to start a thread with a related question, but I'll just put it here.

1997 XJ Classic. I can get airflow from the dashboard vents, but can't get airflow from the footwell vents. Where shall I start looking to solve this?

Thanks in advance!

lgrant

There are others that will weigh in that are more knowledgeable than me, but it's my understanding that the vent selection is a vaccum circuit and the blend door is electrical, totally different control mechanisms. There are many posts on the vent selection so start searching. It would be helpful to have a FSM and a parts catalog. I could email you a 97-99 part catalog.