R32 Airconditioning Not Working

[Rekin]

Plenty of R32 GTST's have a problem where the climate control only blows hot air or cold air.

Even whilst cycling through the temperatures, the air doesnt seem to change.

First step is to check if everything is fine with your climate control;

Follow the below steps, if everything is fine, your problem might be the connection to the blend-door servo motor (read further below)

The r32 has a common problem of the Blend Door Servo Motor to stop working. This is due to the connection to the motor becoming damaged over time.

Solution;

- Go to the passenger foot well area.

- look up where the feet air vent is.

- There you should see a metal rod and a plastic clip.

If the rod has fallen off, clip it back into position.

- Cycle through the hot/cold temp buttons on the climate control quicky and check if you can see the metal rod moving. This rod controls the blend door.

- If the rod doesnt move, then the blend door servo motor is the fault.

- Just before the metal rod, is a wire loom connected to a socket

- Wiggle the wire loom whilst pressing the temp up/down buttons. The Blend door motor will then respond and move.

- I used some cable ties to create some pressure on the loom.

This is just a temp fix, and will not last forever..

Best would be to replace the blend door servo motor and/or harness.

Repair Guide:

If anyone has replaced their blend door servo motor, please post in regards to how difficult it was.

Hope this has helped some r32 owners with their climate control problems

Cheers

Patrick

[heller44]

I must admit, that is a nice write up. Thanks for going to the effort.

With mine it stays hot until I reach under and help the motor start moving.. Should get around to fixing it before summer.

[Rekin]

Some information from _PhaseShiftDown, hope you dont mine me posting your information

Thanks Rekin for the pics, you're a champ m8 ;-)

Mine had the exact problem as you've described. The servo arm dosen't move when I cycle through cold and hot. But when I wiggle the plug while doing that, the servo arm moved. So I tried taping up the wires, pushing the wires upwards, and all sort of other things.... but still have the same issue.

Eventually I was able to find a fix, the trick is to apply a slight pressure on the actual plug towards the right (back of the car). There is a rectangular void on the left of the plug and all I did was stuff some paper in there to create that pressure and the problem solved. I was able to get cold air again!! Bloody awesome. Thanks Rekin!

[heller44]

And here is the reason why it was playing up, and I dare say the exact same fault with both yours and __PhaseShiftDown's cars as well.

piccies

You can clearly see where 4 solder joints on the back of the connector have broken away, one more looks like it is almost gone, and the last is showing stress.

Reflowed the lot with new solder and reassembled.

Easiest way I found to remove the module was to pull the radio bracket with the ac/heater controls out as well, and work through the hole. After you release the rod all the screws are on the top or sides of the unit, none underneath. Unclip the harness from the little jumper cable that is mounted on the top of the module, don't unclip the connection underneath until you have it out.

Didn't take all that long.

James.

[__PhaseShiftDown]

Thats pretty much what I've suspected. Thanks for confirming heller44 -)

So there you go ppl with air con problems. Check this servo out before doing anything else. The paper can be used as a temp fix, but the best way is obviously re-do those solder joint.

[Rekin]

Thanks Heller44 for the pictures and instructions!

Will give it a shot with my car in the coming weeks

[greenzook89]

ok gave it a look on mine, it was the servo motor, just have to get it soldered now but nice to know what the prob is. Cheers Guys

[Ultimategtr]

hey man, does this work for R33 too????

[Madaz]

^^ my guess is yes but pics would be slightly different mine is sticking also will check it out soon

[DjeMz]

And here is the reason why it was playing up, and I dare say the exact same fault with both yours and __PhaseShiftDown's cars as well.

piccies

You can clearly see where 4 solder joints on the back of the connector have broken away, one more looks like it is almost gone, and the last is showing stress.

Reflowed the lot with new solder and reassembled.

Easiest way I found to remove the module was to pull the radio bracket with the ac/heater controls out as well, and work through the hole. After you release the rod all the screws are on the top or sides of the unit, none underneath. Unclip the harness from the little jumper cable that is mounted on the top of the module, don't unclip the connection underneath until you have it out.

Didn't take all that long.

James.

what is it meant to look like dude?

[heller44]

I don't really understand the question mate.

I have pulled apart the mixer actuator module and showing the broken solder contacts on the board-side of the plug, showing a pic of the plug connection from the outside, and a whole pile from the the copper side of the circuit board on the inside.

[__PhaseShiftDown]

what is it meant to look like dude?

You are looking for dry solder joint (the silver spikes coming out of the PCB that are loose). In particular the plug pins that are soldered onto the PCB. If the solder joint is 'dry'. i.e. loose because the solder is getting old. Then it will disrupt the signal, causing the motor arm to become stuck.

So you basically need to 'reflow' the solder by applying a hot soldering iron to the dry solder joing and at the same time, add a little bit of fresh solder. Good as new again.

[Black Widow]

wish i had of known this when i had my r32...i couldn't figure out how to fix it...it was summer at the time and was only blowing hot air...so there's a hose (i think it may be a heater hose of some sort) that connects to a pipe at the back of the engine bay near the fire wall...i disconnected that and hooked it up to another hose and that gave me just cold air..then when i wanted hot air (winter) i reconnected the hoses

[Import S13]

got another question for you guess while your on this.

my climate control wont change from blow air from the vents ONLY. i cant change to demisters or footwells etc just the vents only

any idea?

[Dohmar]

got another question for you guess while your on this.

my climate control wont change from blow air from the vents ONLY. i cant change to demisters or footwells etc just the vents only

any idea?

Yep. There are two plugs on the climate control unit, if the left one isnt seated properly then the selection motor wont work. If you do the diagnostic you'll get numbers 32, 34, 35 and 36 flashing, this happened to me upon reassembling my centre console.

This writeup is great, thankyou very much for doing it. I pulled the actuator out on Monday, had a friend reflow the solder on Tuesday and re-assembled everything last nite. I finally have a working climate control unit. I'm totally stoked that I didn't have to pay mega bucks to get it repaired, cause summer is coming and I really wanted my aircon.

Only thing is, I had to remove the centre kick panel trim cause I couldnt see what was going on in the back. Now I've done it once I reckon I could do it again easily since I know where everything is and where it goes. If you're not sure, don't be afraid to try, just make sure you allocate a fair amount of time because when you do it for the first time there is a bit of a learning curve.

-D

[Moodles2]

Great writeup, just trying to solve my R32 GTR's problem, only blows cold air (great for summer lol)

[pipster11]

got another question for you guess while your on this.

my climate control wont change from blow air from the vents ONLY. i cant change to demisters or footwells etc just the vents only

any idea?

just had this problem in mine

go to the drivers side footwell

look up under the dash and there is an actuator with one rod coming off it, the rod goes into some lever arms and there a like 4 while plastic bits with groves in them the black thing is the actuator that controls it

one of the cogs inside is prob broken

but in my case it had been replaced but the cog wasnt a good fir and bound up on the spindle

pull it out and have a look

you'll soon see whats going on

[Nishant]

Before I go ahead and open my unit up I thought Id ask.

What my car is doing is - I can turn on and change the settings on the control unit just fine but the actual "Fan" or blower doesnt seem to kick it or turn on and i end up with no sort of air blowing.

Any suggestions?

edit:

Just had a go with the auto diagnose.

Step 2 - displays 23 (water temp sensor but the car was dead cold then)

step 3 - displayed 31 (Vent mode faulty) and 36 (DEF)

So according to step 3 it means that the harness or the actuator is faulty so ill be pulling it out. Also while poking around the harness I could hear the actuator motor clicking and making some sorta noise. Could this mean that it indeed is the fault as described above in the posts with the harness and pcb?

but also does that mean that it will not blow any air of any sort at all? My issue was there when i purchased the car with it only blowing air into the footwell and eventually it just stopped blowing any air whatso ever.

Thanks

nish

Edited May 3, 2009 by Nishant

[Moodles2]

I managed to fix mine doing the paper trick, owned it for 6 months and never bothered to diagnose it as I was getting coldair all summer.. aweful for winter

[deformed]

thank you very helpful