2007 Ford Focus Vent Selector Broken

[cody_e]

I have a 2007 Ford Focus and the vent selector is broken. It started seeming like it was sticking but would moved between vent, floor, and defrost. Now it will not move at all and is stuck on vent. Obviously with winter coming up I'll need to get it on defrost.

I thought it was just the knob itself being stripped out. I tried Autozone and Carquest to no avail for parts. I went to the Ford dealership and he said they had the part but they have seen this issue in the past and, while the part I was looking for for the knob needed to be replaced, they said there's a door on the condenser box that most likely needs to be replaced.

They said they saw another Focus come in with the same problem and they initially replaced the gear assembly by the knob that I was looking to replace. It shortly broke and they had to bring it in and replace that condenser box. Basically $600 in parts and easily a 6+ hour job. We're talking $1200+ on a car worth maybe $3000 (it also has 180,000 miles on it).

Needless to say I'm looking to do the repair myself. The main thing now is getting it to defrost so I'm set for winter (this is my first Texas winter but I'm sure I'll need defrost like I did in Wisconsin). I have popped the cover off by the radio and see that there is the gear unit the the knob twists and then it is connected to some cables that go towards the driver side.

I pulled the knob off and also that gear mechanism. The knob seems to move and click fine. I'm thinking where it connects to the cables is stripped out and also that door the parts guy at the dealership is sticking.

I was wondering if there was a way I could fix the door and not have to replace a $600 part? Also, for the gear assembly that turns the cables, how hard is it to disconnect the cables and then manually give a hard pull on the cable to move the door? I'm assuming if they put that new gear assembly for the knob on and it worked for a while, I should be able to pull those cables and manually do this. It just appears the cables don't easily disconnect.

[cody_e]

I think their diagnosis at the dealership was correct. I was able to manually move the door to make it go to defrost so I'm good for the time being. It moved very hard so it's not a surprise the cable broke.

The following video shows a workaround to manually move the door: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW2zSXTZoYE