Blend Door Actuator keeps going out. Getting frustrating.

[2015Etrac]

So my car is out of warranty as of July 25th, but before then, in the spring, I had my car to the dealer 4 times for the blend door actuator. It's been replaced and reset and every time it works for a few days, maybe a few weeks, then goes out again. I hear a pop and lose all the heat on my passenger side, which sucks in the winter because I can't defrost the glass on any passenger side windows. I looked at the invoice and all parts replaced under warranty are warrantied for 12 months, which means I should be able to get them to replace it again. The question is, does the warranty reset with each replacement? So, if they install a new one will it be 12 months from the install date, despite me being out of warranty? I would assume that's the proper thing since they should be responsible for any parts that fail shortly after install, but I don't know?

One other questions is: Does anyone else have this issue? I've seen a few post about it and no ones ever found the solution. For some reason, something, knocks it out of gear. It's not the actuator, even though they always assume it is, it appears to be something that causes the motor to go to far and pop the gear it turns out of place. It's frustrating knowing that it will likely continue to happen, forever. My only option would be to remove the actuator and open or close the door manually to switch from cold air to heat. At least I think this would work.

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[mindo389]

If the dealership insists replacing the actuator and the problem continues, I'd say the dampers inside the evaporator/heater core housing has an issue. I can't speak for the dealership as to why they don't investigate this.
The damper/flapper should move easily. Its not hard to reach, and check it out, other than getting in an unnatural position to reach it. In your case, don't touch it, lest the dealership blame you for the problem.
It took me and my homegrown tech ~10 hours to change the evaporator core out on my car. It wasn't an easy task, and it involved a good amount of work.
At this point, do not let the dealership off the hook, even if you have to be without your car for a few days.

 

[2015Etrac]

If the dealership insists replacing the actuator and the problem continues, I'd say the dampers inside the evaporator/heater core housing has an issue. I can't speak for the dealership as to why they don't investigate this.
The damper/flapper should move easily. Its not hard to reach, and check it out, other than getting in an unnatural position to reach it. In your case, don't touch it, lest the dealership blame you for the problem.
It took me and my homegrown tech ~10 hours to change the evaporator core out on my car. It wasn't an easy task, and it involved a good amount of work.
At this point, do not let the dealership off the hook, even if you have to be without your car for a few days.

Thanks. Yeah, I'm not going to touch it. I'll let them figure it out. My main concern is I brought the car into this dealership twice with the same problem and they failed to fix it correctly, and now that I'm out of warranty it seems like they may only replace the actuator under the part warranty instead of finding and fixing the main cause. Now I may get stuck paying a big amount of money out of pocket to find and fix a problem that they should have fixed months ago. Do you know if there's any recourse I can take in this scenario?

 

[mindo389]

Talk to the dealership's service writer, then the dealership manager. Then go higher up, district, corporate...

 

[2015Etrac]

Talk to the dealership's service writer, then the dealership manager. Then go higher up, district, corporate...

Thanks. Going to call this week and see what they say. At the very least the blend door is covered, but either they find the real problem or I'll just keep brining it back for the blend door until they decide it's easier for them to find the actual cause. I hate dual climate control, it's been nothing but issues on every vehicle I had it in. I wish they would just go back to standard heat/ac like they have on base cars.

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