One of the shafts on the blend doors in my tundra broke in January or February not long after my knee reconstruction. I was in no state to deal with it then so didn’t.
A month or so ago, before everything melted down with my dad, I took the servos and complicated spiral cam off and figured out what was broken. I tried to glue it with gorilla glue and broke it before I even got it back together.
I called a few wreckers and even through they had the trucks, most said they wouldn’t sell the HVAC module as it is too much work to remove. One wrecker told me, ‘yah, we have one. If you pull it, it’s yours for $75…’
Not one to pass up a deal, I went to the wrecker after work and got it mostly out (without damaging anything) in a couple hours. I had to come back the next day with a cordless sawzall to cut the horizontal bar behind the dash because I couldn’t get the drivers door open to remove the bolts.
I was planning to fix this before heading to my dads place but his situation was urgent. Last Saturday, I dove in.
I posted that picture on Facebook with the caption, ‘there has to be an easier way to change the cabin air filter’… one of my friends thought I was serious.
Anyway, when I got it all back together, it would not start. I took most of it back apart again trying to find what I could have done wrong.
I found nothing and did some sleuthing to determine that the issue was related to my security system, and possibly my keys.
I had it towed to the dealer and in minutes speaking with the tech, we figured out that that bastardly little black box on the back of the heater (right up against the firewall), is the mobilizer and I never used my original one.
I spent 3 hours at the dealership this morning removing the dash again (I’m pretty good at this now). I changed out the immobilizer and hopefully on Monday morning, it will start right up for them. Worst case (and likely), they need to reprogram my keys. I must have tried to start it 50 times so stuff gets erased…
I also took the opportunity to put my original blower fan in (the wrecker one is loud).