Broken Blend Doors, Immobilizers, and a while bunch of frustration…

[unclebilly]

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).

[unclebilly]

The dealer charged me 2 hours labour, had to reprogram the ECU, and pair my keys. I’m overall happy to have everything fixed and back to normal.

[Cooper911SC]

Man what a “trek”!! Glad you got it figured out and back together. Seems like the dealer was pretty cool/reasonable with you doing the R&I at their place. 👍

[pmax]

Reassembly is the reverse of the teardown !

Broke how many of those pesky clips ?

[unclebilly]

No tech wanted to take on that job. It’s a pain in the ass job but I’ve done it 4 times now in a month so I’ve got it down to a science. They were amazed I did it in 3 hours. Tonight I recharged my AC and reinstalled the wipers.

[unclebilly]

I broke a couple of the yellow clips but kept every screw, bolt, and clip from the truck I pulled the heater box out of so I had spares.

[LWJ]

A standing ovation. Consider me impressed.

[Cooper911SC]

^^^^Honestly! I’m sure many of us DIY car guys have been there on various vehicles.

Just have to sigh/deep breath and accept “gotta do it”. Slow and steady wins the race sometimes.

Good call on taking/saving everything from the junkyard. I’ve parted out several Porsches over the years…that one mundane “clip” has saved the day over the years.

Hats off to the win UncleBilly.

[hcoles]

Impressive DIY. I hate to think what that would cost at the dealer around here.
It was nice you could work with the dealer to get the electronic bits squared away.

[billybek]

That looks nasty...
I bet their were a couple of cut fingers and some PG-13 or better language thrown about while screwing around with that!

[john70t]

Originally Posted by unclebilly

I spent 3 hours at the dealership this morning removing the dash again (I’m pretty good at this now).

You, sir, earned double kudos this week.
No, wait, lets make that triple.