Heater directional controls not working on a GU

[BearGUST]

Hi all,
I've not long had my GU Wagon, the directional control on the heater/air con seems jammed - the knob moves bugger all and the vents only change from 'screen' to 'screen/floor' setting.
I haven't had a look yet, just thought I'd see if anyone else has experienced this???

[nickpeacock36]

Hi all,
I've not long had my GU Wagon, the directional control on the heater/air con seems jammed - the knob moves bugger all and the vents only change from 'screen' to 'screen/floor' setting.
I haven't had a look yet, just thought I'd see if anyone else has experienced this???

Mines the same, you can reach under the dash and help to manually move the control while moving the lever. I now just leave mine in the one position as i dont want to snap the plastic bits by keep bending them. Hope that makes sense, i just read it back and managed to confuse myself. lol

[BearGUST]

Cheers, I haven't even tried that yet. It's dark when I get home and don't have a garage which makes it very hard to find the time. Might have to visit the oldies one night this week!

[tkn]

Hi all,
I've not long had my GU Wagon, the directional control on the heater/air con seems jammed - the knob moves bugger all and the vents only change from 'screen' to 'screen/floor' setting.


I had a similar problem with the GQ (1998) - what happens is that the grease on the plastic bits dries out. All of the "bits" have to work together without binding for you to be able to select the various settings from DEFROST to CENTRE VENTS.

What had happened to my CQ is that red dust (i.e. iron oxide) had built up on the sliding surfaces and the selector lever had been forced. The result - a broken selector wire. So I removed the broken bits of wire from the outer, but left the outer in place.

If your selector wire has been broken, bent, twisted or stuffed in some other way, an easy way to make a replacement is to buy a universal choke cable from Repco (or one of them) and cut a length of wire of it and then bend the shapes at each end using some needle nose pliers. Bit of a pain because you have to feed the wire through the outer before doing the final bends, but 10 to 15 minutes will sort it.

If your outer is also stuffed, you can also use the choke cable outer.

Next, spray all the plastic bits with WD40 or something like that to dissolve the dried grease, clean everything and coat the sliding surfaces with white grease (i.e. usually doesn't stain - except when it gets dirty) and then bit by bit work everything by hand.

If you have to force anything STOP! Each bit should move fairly easily - if anything is hard to move then there may be something jammed in the air tubes. Could be a nut, bolt, stone, ring pull or something small enough to fall through the defrost vents or be "posted" through the centre vents by the kids.

Its a bit of trial and error - but I found an M6 bolt in one of the Defrost vent tube by feeding a small telescopic magnet through the vent. Lucky it wasn't brass!

Anyway, once you think you've got everything moving by hand - turn on the ignition and turn the fan to high speed and run through all the positions by hand. Leave the doors open because you might disappear in a cloud of dust loosened from inside the vent tubes.

If everything seems to work okay, then connect up the selector wire and gently run through all the positions again. You can then adjust the position of the selector wire outer so that the selector handle lines up with the markings on the dash.

The good news for the GQ was that I could get at the selector cable by removing the centre panel i.e. the whole of the dash did not have to be removed.

[BearGUST]

I had a quick look last night and found that i can manually move the lever to all positions but not freely enough for the cable to do it. I sprayed some lube in the general area but it kooks like more will need to be done.

[BearGUST]

After leaving everything to soak for a couple of days I've hooked the cable back up and all is working. Hopefully it stays that way!