helmdoggie

Alright, this is driving me nuts. I replaced a bad power steering pump on my wife's 2003 and when I was done, the heater/ac will only blow out the defrost. It was working before the repair, so I'm assuming that it is a vaccum hose somewhere that I pulled off. The problem is I can't find it. Does anyone know if there is a vaccum hose by the power steering pump that could be the culprit. I did look under the dash and all the hoses look good there. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

tripletdaddy

Since no one else has replied yet, I'll help in more general terms and hopefully someone who knows about your specific year can chime in with more specific info. BTW, if you haven't, you should search this subject from the Windstar main page search function with "defrost"," no heat", etc. You are most likely right that a vacuum hose is disconnected, but unfortunately, it could be way under the cowl. You can try listening for where it is off back behind the strut tower, but you may have to use a length of hose to better hear and pinpoint its location. TTBOMK, the vacuum line crosses over behind the motor and goes into a tee which also acts as a check valve. From there it goes to your hvac and the other leg goes to a vacuum storage box, all of which is hidden behind the strut tower. I would think you should hear it leaking or interfere with the engine performance, possibly even giving you an engine fault code. To see if you have any vacuum at the hvac, you will have to backtrace the lines underneath the dash to a supply line as the lines to the door motors(cans) only gets vacuum when the hvac controls send vacuum, but they only have vacuum briefly. I do know for certain vacuum is always present to the back of the hvac controls, and the vacuum supply line into the pass compartment is usually black. Since you can't get anything else to work, most likely you aren't getting vac inside, but it may be possible the vac line separated at a connection inside, though more likely happened outside. Hope that helps.

Andrew1941

Mine is a 2001 and I believe the vacuum line under the cowel and dash is a small (1/8"???) red plastic line. When I was repairing the P0174 code problem and had the cowel off, I noticed someone had removed the line to the storage box and put a screw in the line to act as a plug! I tool the screw out and put it back to the box (not knowing what the heck the box was for - another of many things I learned by reading on this forum). It made it so the controls no longer revert to defrost immediately after stopping the engine. As mentioned, the plastic line and tee is behind the engine on the passenger side of the engine under the cowel and comes thru the firewall behind the glove box and works it way up to the centre console.