Re: climate control out of control

[Eliot Lim <eliot@lanmola.engr.washington.edu>]

> But if I drive for a few miles, stop the engine and restart
> it after a few minutes to continue my trip the climate control
> acts up. Although it still shows 70 F it heats up constantly.

hey, this just happened to me.. there is a crude workaround
in my case:  if you drop the temperature all the way down
to "LO" it will (at least in the v8) stop the flow of
coolant into the heater core.  in my case i have a choice
between bake, freeze or suffocate.  :-)

> Even lowering the input to the minimal setting doesn't
> help the problem. 

do you mean 64F or "LO"?

>I also noticed that the temprature gauge is 
> slowly fluctuating between the actual cooling temp and cold
> when the system acts up, it's constant otherwise.

don't have this problem.

> Has anybody else experienced the same problem. Is it just a flaky
> connector? I cleaned the connector on the climate control
> itself but without luck. Since the temp gauge is acting up
> as well I also suspect the 4 wire temp sender in the engine
> compartment. Any ideas?

the climate control has quite a rich set of diagnostics that you can
perform.  in my case it was traced to a temperature regulating motor
that controls the air blending flap.  it is on order right now.  the
chief mechanic found the bug in a matter of minutes just by using the
built in diagnostics.  since my car is still under warranty i haven't
gotten round to figuring out how to use the diagnostics yet.  i
suggest that as a starting step.


eliot