driver9283

My air heating system stopped working last fall, the garage said something was either broken or stuck it had to be either completely off or on the highest heating setting (so they did the latter because it was getting cold time of year in the Northeast).

Two days ago I took it there just to have the heating turned off (it's blowing hot air on me all the time and it's warm out now) and they charged me $100 to do so, saying it's a pain to get to the switch. Also that if I wanted the heating turned back on in the fall it would be a similar charge (so that I'd be paying $200/year so to have it switched back-and-forth 2x/year as long as I keep the car [it only has 80k miles despite its age]).

I realized, maybe I should have just pulled the circuit breaker-fuse for the heating system in the car this week rather than paying them to switch it off, would this have worked? (I'll still need to pay to have it turned on next fall, but the following spring maybe I can just disable it myself this way).

The mechanic said new air systems would be hard to get and/or expensive because of the age of the car and used systems (to replace the whole thing) might have shoddy wiring at this point because of the age (so also undesirable).

Is there way around this? (paying $200/year just to have a switch turned off and on? I'm somewhat handy myself, so I was wondering if the circuit breaker trick didn't work if there's a way to just pop out the whole assembly and do it myself? (I've done similar things for car audio systems).

Thanks

Urlik

I find it hard to believe they couldn't replace a switch. Could the issue be a blend door actuator? Those can sometimes be hard to get to to replace.

driver9283

They didn't tell me what part went bad, maybe I'll swing by there and ask them.

Urlik

If you get a better idea what the issue is, check for online videos that can walk you through fixing it.

driver9283

I got a copy of the work order from the garage, it just says: "Switch Blend Door from Heat to A.C."

Urlik

Sounds like it probably is a bad blend door actuator then. Look for some DIY videos for your car model to replace that and see if its something you think you could do.