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Old 10-09-2011, 01:35 AM   #1
encantotom
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Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: mesa, az
Posts: 1,375
Default dash heater/ac controls

hi all,

my defrosters have never worked great. so today i had a buddy here for the weekend and we spent a chunk of the day tearing the hole thing down to see what the deal was.

first of all, i had just gotten a like new dash control unit (it is a dodge truck late 80's) and put a new old stock pushbutton and vacuum control unit on it i found on ebay. previously i had replaced the air powered vacuum pump with a 12v ford diesel truck pump. i put the pump in the drivers side bay in front of the wheel.

so the vacuum lines connect with a rubber 7 hole plug that pushes on the back of the control panel and clips hold it on.

the control panels have max ac, ac, heat, vent, defrost.

we took the plenum apart in the front passenger side bay to be able to see the inside where the blower motors are.

we took off all ten flex hoses that come off the plenum. then we put a blow dryer in each of the hoses and traced which vents they sent air too. then i also was able to find out if there was any large volume leaks.

i did find one that seemed to be plugged. that ended up being a hose that was kinked. (fixed)

so now we knew that hoses were are ok.

next we made sure the vacuum source line from the pump to the tank (behind the dash and about the size of a large softball) to the control panel. it worked and held vacuum.

next we used my hand vacuum pump to see which of the remaining two vacuum lines that go from the dash to the plenum do.

one flips between the dash air vents and the defroster vents.

the other opens the two vacuum controlled flappers on the bottom of the plenum on the bottom of the coach that allow fresh air into the plenum.

so we knew they worked and were ok.

btw, i have a aux defroster motor and switch for it on the center console separate than the dash controls.

on the dash, the defroster vents there are ten of them. 5 on each side.

there are two on each side that get hot air from the plenum when switched on. (if the engine is running and the slider is over to hot.

there are two on each side that push air from the aux defroster blower switch on the center console. btw, that takes cabin air, so it is the same temp as the cabin air.

then there is one on each side that are dummy vents. they are purposely blocked off below the dash. because they are in the way of the wipermotor on one side and something else on the other side.

now to try the actual dash controls

we plugged the vacuum plug onto it.

nothing worked.

we took the plug off and after thinking about it for a while we went to the autoparts store and got 1/8" inch vacuum plugs.

it ends up the rubber plug leaked so nothing could work. silcone didnt fix it. it wasnt repairable.

there are 7 ports for the plug. one is the vacuum source and the other 6 are the combinations that have each of the dash control pushbuttons either open up the vacuum port or keep it closed.

we made unions by cutting the end off of the cap and plugged it onto the back of the unit and plugged the 3 vacuum hoses into it and plugged the others so they wouldnt leak.

we knew which one was the source so we use the cut plug as a coupler and put it on the control.

then we experiment with each port to map out which pushbutton setting would open the port.

i wanted fresh air coming in on AC and Vent.

one of the settings only opened the port to vacuum on defrost, so that one went to the defrost hose.

now there were 5 others to check and map.

the closed that we could get this unit to do was to have fresh air on vent and max ac and ac. since my dash air doesnt work very well anyway, that is the one that we used.

then we used our new connection system to hook them up and plug the rest and tried it all out.

now my defrosters work strong and with heat (i ran the engine to get the coolant up to temp).

the louvers open to fresh air on the right settings.

and all works again.

btw, it wasnt hooked up that way for vacuum lines before. so now it is the way that i wanted.

another little thing fixed.

fun way to spend a saturday after a stressful work week.

tom
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