1999 Ford F150, Replacing Broken Blend Air Door, Part Three

This is the last part of this repair article.

The only aggravating part of this repair is the antenna cable. In order to pull the passenger side of the dash out far enough the cable has to be disconnected from the dash at two locations. It is held to the dash with push pin retainers and it is a bit of a pain to disconnect. I used the pliers on the floor board to dislodge them.

A better view of the disconnected radio antenna. Again it only has to have the two clips disconnected.

With the dash pulled back it is reasonably easy to remove the screws that hold the top cover in place. I found out in retrospect that it is easier to remove the cover if you first remove a couple of other things. Removing this one screw.

Will allow this piece of duct work to be removed.

Then the two 5.5 mm headed screws that hold this relay box in place can be removed. The box can be lifted out of the way.

There are 16 screws in all that have to be removed from the heater- a/c upper case cover. All have 8 mm heads. The ones nearer the firewall are a little bit difficult to get to but not really a big deal. The one thing to be careful of is to not lean against the dash. because it is not sitting properly during this operation, I think it could be easily damaged with too much pressure.  There is one vacuum hose that runs across the top of the cover. The right side will disconnect and then the hose fitting will lift up and off of the case cover. Be sure to reconnect this hose before the dash is put back in place. If not the vacuum controlled mode doors will not work. Sorry no pictures of this. 

Now that the cover is removed you can see the broken door sitting there on an angle. There is a clip at the top right corner that has to be released before the door and door frame can be lifted up. If the actuator is still mounted it may take a little bit of wiggling to free he door frame.

Now with the door and frame out of the way you can see the heater core. It is the smaller core assembly to the left in the next picture. The larger core assembly on the right is the evaporator core. If you had to change either one of these components the same procedures would apply to those repairs as well.

The new door installed in the old door frame.

I tried to install the assembly with the metal sleeve installed and was having difficulty. I took the sleeve off and tried to install it into the lower case and found that it would not fit. Initially I thought I was going to have to remove the actuator to install the new door but testing the fit of the sleeve told me that it must be for an optional application. I also used a set of calipers to measure the old and new shaft outside diameters and they were the same with the sleeve removed.

The new door and frame assembly as I am installing it into the heater- a/c case.

The door frame assembly fully seated into position. Notice that the frame slides down far enough that the upper tank of the heater core is exposed.

A couple of the screws near the fire wall side of the cover are difficult to start by hand. I use a little dab of weather strip adhesive to hold the screw into my socket.

It is not pretty but it is quite effective.

With the cover back in place and all sixteen screws back where they belong, all I have to do is re install the removed parts back into their proper places.

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