Outside Air Blows Warm

I thought the AC on my 96 Explorer 4.0 finally needed a shot of 134a
when I noticed it was blowing warm outside air. it was cold outside
too. i replaced a mixing damper or some sort of thing on my Cadillac
once but as a CRS sufferer, i don't remember exactly what i did.
coulds it be heater control valve? tia.

"Nerdlinger" > wrote in message
...
> I thought the AC on my 96 Explorer 4.0 finally needed a shot of 134a
> when I noticed it was blowing warm outside air. it was cold outside
> too. i replaced a mixing damper or some sort of thing on my Cadillac
> once but as a CRS sufferer, i don't remember exactly what i did.
> coulds it be heater control valve? tia.

There have been a lot of problems with the "blend door" on those Explorers.
If you Google you can probably find the fix. It involves dropping the glove
box and prying up the actuator. The part the actuator fits into (so it can
move it) often breaks and will no longer turn. A small hole is drilled into
the actuator shaft and a small nail (3D or so) is put into the hole and held
with a dab of epoxy. There is an article with pictures on
www.ford-trucks.com. You will probably need a small mirror and a
flashlight.

I recently took it apart on my '97 and it was not broken. Now I'm going the
change the thermostat. In my case it's not getting hot but temp gauge never
gets up to normal so that would seem pretty obvious. Anyone know if a bad
thermostat will cause the CEL to come on due to low coolant temp?

"Ulysses" > wrote in message
...
>
> "Nerdlinger" > wrote in message
> ...
> > I thought the AC on my 96 Explorer 4.0 finally needed a shot of 134a
> > when I noticed it was blowing warm outside air. it was cold outside
> > too. i replaced a mixing damper or some sort of thing on my Cadillac
> > once but as a CRS sufferer, i don't remember exactly what i did.
> > coulds it be heater control valve? tia.
>
> There have been a lot of problems with the "blend door" on those
Explorers.
> If you Google you can probably find the fix. It involves dropping the
glove
> box and prying up the actuator. The part the actuator fits into (so it
can
> move it) often breaks and will no longer turn. A small hole is drilled
into
> the actuator shaft and a small nail (3D or so) is put into the hole and
held
> with a dab of epoxy. There is an article with pictures on
> www.ford-trucks.com. You will probably need a small mirror and a
> flashlight.
>
> I recently took it apart on my '97 and it was not broken. Now I'm going
the
> change the thermostat. In my case it's not getting hot but temp gauge
never
> gets up to normal so that would seem pretty obvious. Anyone know if a bad
> thermostat will cause the CEL to come on due to low coolant temp?
>
>

Well, I changed the thermostat and that fixed part of the problem but still
no heat. I remove the blend door actuator again and looked in there again
and sure enough it was broken. It wasn't broken last week--at least it
didn't look broken. So I did the nail trick and now it works great.
Whoever figured that out should get some kind of humanitarian award.