Heat temperature dial only turns 2/3

Upholstery, floor mats, seats, window tint and anything inside the vehicle and not electronic
Post Reply
bratboy
Posts: 41
Joined: Sun Jun 18, 2017 9:30 pm

Heat temperature dial only turns 2/3

Post by bratboy »

Or else they would say in spinal tap it only goes to 7. So the story is this, my friend has a vibe and he's going to sell it. And I made it very clear I want to have it as a second car because my first car was appearing to have an issue. And he's got to do stuff and Fiddle and make the car great so it doesn't big work on it but it doesn't worthless little things like remove the stock stereo and replaces it with a single DIN stereo of ill repute. He does a great job of doing a semi gloss black on the bezel around it and bills this little plastic wall cover to make sure the hole is not showing. It looks weird how the stereo is at the top of this big rectangular hole and there's a wall underneath it but like I said the paint makes a car totaled look awesome in that one spot. The stereo is so shity it's as good as giving an elephant 4 tons of exlax. You go under a bridge and you're lucky to get any signal until you're gone. I was even Parts in town were the worst stereos in the worst cars would have normal reception but this thing would start blacking out.

You're wondering why I'm mentioning the stereo. Because it blows me away with what happened next. In order to swap the stereos out he had to do the removal and refit. While doing this something happened... The temperature dial was working fine and I remember him saying something about replacing light bulbs and one fell. It was never to be found. He did the stereo and he put all this work into this totally awful $7 unit and it says Hey wow I've completed the job so it must be great. But the heater dial only goes to 7 and I think I'm being generous when I say 7. Does anybody have any idea why the dial does not turn all the way fully to the right? Or clockwise I guess... It's driving me a little crazy that I had to vent to regain some psychological well-being. Thank you in advance for anybody who has any thoughts on this or for those that might get a laugh out of what I've written
User avatar
joatmon
Posts: 10018
Joined: Fri Mar 21, 2003 5:19 am
Location: SMC MD

Re: Heat temperature dial only turns 2/3

Post by joatmon »

First, in a Vibe,m there is an antenna amplifier built into the antenna base, it gets power from the radio. I am not sure if that only affects AM, or AM and FM, but if the aftermarket radio install didn't maintain providing power to the antenna amplifier, it may be related to poor radio reception.

I can think of two possible scenarios that the work done would affect the movement of the temperature control.
- Perhaps the dropped light bulb is lodged in the back of the control, keeping it from moving past 2/3. Can't remember what the back of the control is like and how likely that might be.
- The temperature control is mechanical, the knob moves a cable in a sleeve ( a Bowden cable, for the next trivia game) that is attached to a door in the HVAC box that controls how much air flows through the heater core. If for some reason the bulb replacement involved an attempt, however successful, at removing the HVAC control from the dash, then perhaps that temp control cable was not re-installed correctly. (I once tried to remove that thing and as Gandalf said of the balrog, "This foe is beyond you" and I gave up.) If he didn't put it back correctly, it may need to be adjusted. See viewtopic.php?t=1004 for how to adjust that cable on the other end, which is fairly easy, and hopefully that's all it will take
Image
Post Reply