Driver side blowing halfway cold air....

[LittleHoov]

Ok my turn this time:

When I kick on the AC, the passenger side blows nice and cold, but the driver side blows...not so much.

Its not hot air by any means, its just not as cold as the passenger side, and its very noticeable, especially in the center vents.

I do have dual climate control.

Ive read this could be a blend door actuator, but I dont honestly know where they are, how to get to them, etc, etc.

[carbon02]

I may have some information on the dash/HVAC parts diagrams. I'll take a look this weekend. I'm not sure of the setup on the dual automatic system, but I remember seeing the blend doors pretty far down into the drawings.

Going off my memory, some of the doors that divert the air to the various locations, defrost, heater, vents are vaccuum driven, but I believe the temperature door is electrically actuated.

It would really suck to have to pull the center console to get access to the heating components. It may be easier to pull the seats, and lay down inside the car to see what's under the knee panel covers.

It may be benefical to try to power the HVAC system actuator directly, as removal of the HVAC controller is easy, but it may take some electrical diagram studying to determine what's exactly driving that actuator.

[carbon02]

Here's some pics that might help. Just putting two files on a shutterfly site has caused me enough issues. I can only imagine how much time Krivasauto has into his shutterfly site!


and

[LittleHoov]

It can also be low freon.

Thats where I was planning on starting. The HVAC pics are helpful, yet I still dont really know what Im looking at with them.

Ive claimed again and again I dont know a tremendous amount about cars, and HVAC is probably one of my weakest areas, if not the weakest area, so Im trying to stumble through it haha.

[brcidd]

This is very typical sympton of system low on refrigerant-- the entrance to evaporator flow is on the passenger side, the exit is on driver's side- so when it goes low on charge, the cooling can only be done on entrance (passenger) side.

V-5 compressors have belly o-rings that leak- I highly recommend you have your remaining refrigerant pulled out and weighed. I'd bet you have about 30% of your charge or less in it (variable compressors do not "rapid cycle" when charge gets low)

I get this complaint about 5 or 6 times a year on many dual climate control systems...and it is almost always the low charge scenario.

[LittleHoov]

Well I ended up going the DIY refrigerant recharge kit, my parents already had the cheap kit with the gauge, so I just bought a can of r134 to match....according to the gauge it was a little bit low, but of course I dont trust it 100%

I filled it to just a little under the recommendations on the can for the current temp, it seemed to perk it up quite a bit. Its hard to say for sure yet.

It was blowing nice and cold, but its only about 75 outside with relatively low humidity. But it was blowing cooler than when I started messing with it today, and this is at idle. Ill know more when summer comes around and its about 105 with our lovely 99.9999% humidity level.