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Problem with manual air con

Greasy Hands

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I today discovered a problem - the air flow is no longer powerful out of the face vents, it seems to continue blowing out of the foot vents and nothing comes out of side vents at all in the face vent mode. All other positions work as expected. This is a recent occurrence as it worked perfectly a few weeks ago.

Might I have a torn vacuum pod or a leak or ???
 

Greasy Hands

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I have confirmed the fault

there is definitely a blown vacuum box/pod.

after engine shut down in the face position all vacuum is lost in the system and the air defaults to the windscreen and you can hear all the vacuum being lost prior to this too.

Interestingly - i did not for the first time have a cold start missfire this morning - the knob was last left on windscreen - I'm wondering if the cold start missfire is caused by the vacuum leak for the face vent vacuum box.

Now i just have to work out where the hell that box is and hope i don't have to pull the dash off.
 

Greasy Hands

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there are 2 x 3 way vacuum boxes under the air handling unit - the one closest to the drivers side is working fine in all 3 positions.

the one closest to the passenger side works fine in 2 positions - middle and fully out. fully in does not work and leaks. Fault confirmed by assiting it all the way in - air now blows out of face vents.

And as luck would have it, the one thats blown is the one thats a prick to change. I'm going to have to remove the stereo i think.
 

Brett_jjj

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A vacuum leak will definitely cause the engine to misfire when starting from cold. I had a problem with misfiring when starting from cold on my VSV6, couldnt find the problem for ages, then the purge cannister solenoid failed and logged an error code, the misfire went away as soon as I replaced the solenoid. It was stuck in the full open position causing a vacuum leak to the engine.
 

Greasy Hands

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Yeah, im yet to check out that solenoid, but will do soon.

Cockup of the century, my interior is now in a million pieces and I have the burst diaphragm/actuator/box (what ever the hell its called) in my hands - but the stealerships are all closed - now now has to remain undrivable until next week sometime if I get time to work on it again.

And BTW, if you think your car is clean, you haven't the real story till you start removing the centre console. How disgusting!
 

0081

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Good luck kith it all mate i had my whole dash out a few months ago due to the recurc actuator leaking causing the air to change while go8ng up hills.
 

Greasy Hands

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I did notice 1 more vacuum hose going over to the blower motor area - i assume this is where the recirc actuator is ?

I certainly hope i never have to remove the dash, removing the clipped in trim alone is a traumatising experience because of the fear of breaking it. At least however while the lower part of the dash and center console are in the house i'm able to clean them up properly and make them look new again and vacuum out the filth from under it.
 

0081

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I did notice 1 more vacuum hose going over to the blower motor area - i assume this is where the recirc actuator is ?

I certainly hope i never have to remove the dash, removing the clipped in trim alone is a traumatising experience because of the fear of breaking it. At least however while the lower part of the dash and center console are in the house i'm able to clean them up properly and make them look new again and vacuum out the filth from under it.

Yep that's the one, has a single hose going to it, it sounds like it could also be the controls not sending the vac to the pod thing, to test mine I removed the AC controls and used a manual hand held vac pump and tested each hose to see what one didn't hold a vac.
 

Greasy Hands

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i have now replaced both of those lower vacuum actuators - the one closest to the left held no vacuum - i even pulled it apart to see why and the rubber diaphragm was torn.

BTW; I bench tested the charcoal canister purge solenoid and its 100% perfect. Normally closed, seals perfectly - voltage applied to coil, opens instantly - disconnect, closes and seals perfectly instantly. Tested 30+ times no problems.

Will be interesting to see if the cold start 5 second misfire is still there.
 
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