TMongiello

I just want to say how much I love this forum and the folks on here. CuJo's post was exactly what I needed when I had the "rattle of death" happen yesterday.
Been experiencing less that cold air for 2 months now, never suspected the ReCirc door until the rattle happened to me. Sure enough, that gear piece from the door assembly was in my blower/fan cage. Removed the blower fan and zip tied teh door "up" so that it stayted on recirc. Nowe I ahve cold air again and NO rattle!

Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread!

jkanderson03

Rainy Saturday around here today gave me a reason to try the door replacement. I was successful, but it was not a fun job. Zip-tying the door into place would have been much easier, but I live where there are four seasons and an operational recirc door is nice to have. Took me a shade over 4 hours, but that included stopping for lunch and regrouping to find tools a couple of times. If I didn't have to do quite so much experimenting, I'm confident I probably could have done it in ~2hrs. On that note, I'm going to leave some tips here to hopefully save others some time.

- I strongly suggest pulling the airbag. The guy in the video mentions he doesn't think it is necessary. That might be true, but it definitely makes the job easier and probably saves time. It gives you much better visibility, and if nothing else provides better angles to shine light.

- Loosen most of the big wiring harnesses. There's a large one above the airbags that is shown in the video. There is also a metal bracket holding a couple harnesses/plugs just to the cab side of the actuator motor for the recirc door. It's held in by two screws that are easy to get to. Getting that out of the way makes reaching things a bit easier.

- Practice removing and inserting the door in the new assembly a time or two so you know the angles/procedure that works the best. If you get the angle wrong, the door will bind on insertion and make things difficult. I found that putting the gear end of the door up into place first with the door facing up and a bit forward is the easiest, but still requires some pretty decent stress on the housing and door itself to get through the opening. I cracked one of the reinforcement ribs near the stud end of the door taking my new one out of the housing. Luckily, it's not a high stress area and it actually makes the door more flexible. The hot water trick that has been mentioned may help prevent this.

- Remove the actuator motor. I thought I could probably get by with it attached, but ended up removing it for better visibility to the screw between the motor and firewall. It's a good thing I did remove it, as in the time that my door had been broken, the motor had over-rotated the gear to a position that I would never have been able to rotate the door into to get it seated. I had to remove the motor cover and manually advance the gears to a position that was in the operating range of the door. There is an arrow on the housing that needs to match up with an arrow on the gear itself. Removing the motor also gives you visibility to get the gear end of the door in position in it's hole before you flex the stud end up into the housing. This prevents the binding that I mentioned previously.

- The guy in the video mentions how much easier his flex shaft screwdriver made the job. That is true. I have a couple of different flex shafts I used on the job, but also several extensions/etc and a ratcheting 8mm box end wrench. One thing that I have that I think may have been just as much if not more helpful than the flex shaft is a right-angle drill attachment. Mine is longer than the picture below, but the same concept. I actually used the flex shaft and the right-angle adapter together to reach a couple of the deeper screws. Luckily, they don't take a ton of torque or it wouldn't have worked.

- One last trick that saved me some headaches is to use electrical tape to tape the screws into my socket when I was putting things back together. I couldn't get my hands into a couple of the places to start the screws, so securing the screws to the socket has the only way to get them back in there. A socket or nut driver with a magnet could also work, but when you're reaching that far back into small spaces, the chances of knocking the screw off of the magnet are pretty good.

I'm not a mechanic and actually don't usually have the time to do much wrenching on my own vehicles, but I am pretty good with my hands. This isn't a job that requires a lot of mechanical skill, just attention to detail and patience. Luckily, there isn't a ton of severe damage you can do by giving it a try as long as you aren't pinching/pulling wires (and you disconnect the battery and let the airbag discharge before removing it).

Hopefully this helps someone.

kmg90

The person who posted this photo of theirs zip tied open said that this is for constant fresh air not constant recirculation so I’m just clarifying. This happened to us a couple months ago and we zip tied it open with the same thought that it will be stuck on recirculation, but now I’m questioning. Also since it’s been getting really hot out the AC doesn’t seem to be cooling like it used to but maybe it just needs charged and isn’t related to this issue above. My other question is if we do have it in recirc mode always, then how is that going to be in the winter time with defrosting? Thanks for your time!
F150 FX4 5.0 V8

TMongiello

It's difficult to determine at which angle this was taken since there is no physical way to get up in there and look for yourself without a camera.

What I did was flip the door "towards the seats" as opposed to towards the firewall. This worked for me and my AC is now blowing 50° from the vents. The only thing that is still a mystery is that I have to keep the fan no higher than 3 or else the temperature out of the vents rises to 60° or higher until I drop the fan speed to 3 or less. No idea what could be causing this except that the higher fan speed is able to move the door enough to pull in fresh air. I live in Florida and we are in the mid to high 90's with high humidity every day the last 2 months.

There is a video out there of a guy who was able to replace the door without removing the dash but it seems like it's darned near impossible so I doubt I will try it. Currently planning on when I can feasibly take enough days to remvoe the dash and make the repair.