Issues with temperature/air control pannel

[hpmad]

Hello,

I have an issue with the hot/cold air control panel in my 1980 911 CS.

It seems that things are partially broken.
Moving the levers is hard, and causes the plastic bezel to move...

In the picture here, I unscrewed the M10 holding screw behind it to be able to pull it out to try to see what I could see...

What do you guy suggest I do to try to improve things from the current status...



Thanks,
Cyrille

[hpmad]

sorry, I am trying to put an image, but could not get it to work.

Here is a link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sNZSd8pHQJPrVvSRemK-LjX_vuRd_sGE/view?usp=sharing

Cyrille

[Dpmulvan]

Could be cables or flaps sticking. Go into frunk Try opening and closing by hand see if they’re sticky
Or if the cables are binded up. Seen a lot of broken control plates from forcing.

[Dpmulvan]

If I remember correctly I couldn’t remove cables from control panel while they were in the dash because there wasn’t enough room. Had to remove cables in frunk and pull out through interior.
Hopefully your flaps just need some lube and your cables are not rusted. PIA job

[hpmad]

Hello,

The cables are "hard", not impossible to move, but hard... which explains why the control plate is broken...

Is it possible to buy new ones?

How do I "unbind" the cables?

Cyrille

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by hpmad

sorry, I am trying to put an image, but could not get it to work.

Usually, you can write markdown like this (extra spaces inserted so the board software doesn't try to render it): [ i m g ] < i m a g e u r l > [ / i m g ]

But that doesn't seem to work for images on Google Drive.

You could upload the image to Pelican - then hosted directly on the board and insulated from whatever your external hosting site decides to do 5-10 years down the road. (think PhotoBucket making many 1000s of forum threads over the entire internet quite useless by removing images for non-paid accounts).

Originally Posted by hpmad

Here is a link:

Cyrille

Here is your image with non-essential EXIF data stripped, uploaded to Pelican:

[spuggy]

Originally Posted by hpmad

Hello,

The cables are "hard", not impossible to move, but hard... which explains why the control plate is broken...

Is it possible to buy new ones?

How do I "unbind" the cables?

Cyrille

You need to figure out why the cables are binding - my guess would be that they probably aren't.

Once disconnected, my cables moved freely. Although after 40+ years, a little lubrication probably wouldn't hurt... Silicon lube or white lithium grease would reduce friction between the outer jacket and the piano wire.

Obviously, you will need to fix, repair or replace anything broken in the dash control panel.

Once you disconnect the cables from the flapper/distribution boxes, it will probably be obvious where the problem lies. I'm betting that either the control boxes or the internal flaps will be broken, misaligned or binding. The levers with the flaps should move quite freely.

The flaps can get misaligned, jam or break, things crumble to dust over time, the control box supporting the shaft can break, etc - and then the flaps don't move freely.

The control boxes are kind of a bear to get to/work on, they can get very brittle with age and heat-cycles - and the two halves are held together with spring clips around "ears" which can break off if you look at them funny.

You're probably going to want some spares - they are NLA from Porsche.

These guys seem to be 3D printing (from carbon-fibre nylon) many of the parts that get problematic with age: Classic 911 Air Control Box.

No affiliation - but seems like a better approach than buying used control box parts hoping they're in better shape than yours despite being roughly the same age...

Oh, and the small bolts (M5, I think?) with a hole drilled through them that clamp down the end of the piano wire to the levers when you're putting it back together? Buy extras. The sweet spot between "that's as tight as we can get" and "I just pulled the bolt into two pieces" is pretty small and may take a try or two to get the feel for it...