No Heat from HVAC_Blend Door

[jw4free]

I moved from Kansas to Boston this summer. We had a heavy cold rain, so I needed to run the defroster (in summer) which doesn't happen in Kansas.
The windshield wouldn't clear due to no heat. None.. So I used A/C mode. It was cold, but pulled the humidity out of the air and off the glass.

Diagnosis.. Heater core plugged... I have 192K miles and never had an issue with the heat in past winters. Replaced the heater core with the one I had purchased years ago with the Goodwill program money.

Turned on the heat, and blowing cold. WTH. Both tube sides of the core were piping hot.

Now I am thinking it is a blend door issue. I have an SE. How is the easiest way to visualize this with the console and underdash panels removed? I noticed I could not actuate the white plastic lever on the driverside, to expose the 4th screw on the heater core cover. Related, or operator error?

Perhaps there is a good writeup on this great forum, I'll keep searching.
Thanks.

 

[AverageAndy]

Hey. Just wanted to share some potentially helpful information to anyone who may have issue in the future.
About 2 months ago I began having that same problem where my driver side vents was blowing out extremely hot air no matter what the climate control temp was set to. All other vents in car worked fine. At first it would happen randomly, where somedays it managed to correct itself and work fine. Until about a month ago, it completely stopped working and I was getting nothing but hot air from driver side all the time. After doing a lot of researching, I discovered that you can reset the blend door motor without the VCDS by simply holding down the middle vent and AC button at the same time (attached image shows which two buttons I’m referring to) for a couple seconds while the vehicle is started. Once you release the buttons, the orange light will begin flashing on those two buttons for about 10-15 seconds while the reset takes place. Once they stop flashing, you should be good to go. I performed this reset a little less than a month ago and all my vents have been working perfectly fine ever since. Hope this info is helpful to someone.

Found this from another post, maybe try it first before pulling dash?

 

[jw4free]

Conducted the reset, now we wait for cooler temps. I forgot to mention that I had the check engine light on due to EGR Cooler out of spec. I cleared it with VCDS a few months back. The error code popped up a day later.

I reset it after swapping the heater core. So far the check engine light hasn't come back.

Touch wood, Here we go to 200K.