skonski

Hi MB World!,

I've looked high and low through the forum to see if anyone else had this problem, but I couldn't find anything similar.

My girlfriend purchased her first car a 2003 C240 (W203)

Its super clean, and everything appeared to be working perfectly when we purchased it.
Now that summer has hit we've been using the Air conditioning more, which blows ice cold, but the air flow is **** weak through the main front vents, and high on our feet. This is despite us switching where the airflow is supposed to go (regardless if its on auto or not).

We took it into our mechanic and he discovered that 2 out of the 4 actuators are out which control the air flow. He quoted $1100 to fix because apparently its a day and a half of labor + parts, I'm going to take it in for a second opinion at another mechanic, but does anyone have a simple solution to this?

We never really want to use the feet mode, we'd prefer the air to go straight to our face, I was thinking of just taking the assembly apart and duck taping the foot well area, although I have no idea where i'd start with that....

Any advice??

Thanks,

Ryan


Other notes if this helps:

Setting the air to the windshield and feet work perfectly, (no air comes from face vents)

Setting the air to feet only works perfectly (air goes to feet)

Setting air to face only does not work (air goes primarily to feet, trickles out of the face vents, and is somewhat strong in the center dash vent which we normally leave closed so that airflow is a little stronger on the face vents)

HEAT: I have not personally tested this since its been hot recently, but the mechanic said the Heat blows hard out of the face vents when its on the face setting and not on your feet...

VVF

I might be wrong but I believe that hot and cold air flow is controlled by the same actuators.
Maybe you can try setting it to hot, getting the flow to face vents, and then switching to cold?

See this document: http://www.mercedestechstore.com/pdf...2010-30-02.pdf

skonski

Yes! Excellent doc, thank you for that, now I know which actuators my mechanic was talking about.

I just tested the heat, same issue, my mechanic was wrong about that. Could it be the actuator thats messed up if it does close for the windshield setting or is it a computer glitch?

VVF

AFAIK there are linkages that break more frequently than the actuators themselves.

I am assuming you've checked this sticky thread: https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...g-hissing.html

skonski

Yeah i was just checking out that thread actually. Except my car doesn't have the clicking problem, would have to take everything out just to diagnose!

Where would I buy a new actuator if worse comes to worst??

VVF

parts com, getmercedesparts com, autohausaz, rmeuropean, rockauto, etc...
The actuators probably have model numbers on them, so you will be able to google that in the worst case.

skonski

Thanks for your help, I'll post what I end up doing!

Cheers

Ryan

skonski

Today I took off the plastic lining above the footwell and duck taped the footwell vents, there is actually good access to the actuator on the drivers side, on the passenger side the actuator is behind a lot of junk and very hard to get to, but the vent is there and easy to seal. The air flow vastly improved on the face setting, but the center right air vent isn't as powerful as the left.... Weird!
I'm still going to get my mechanic's opinion on having those vents blocked by duck tape just to see what he thinks.

gsrook

I was going to create a new thread until I found this one. I am having the same problem. No clicking/hissing. AC works on dash/window and on feet, but basically no cold air blowing out of the main front vents.
I'm not the most informed about actuators, but someone mentioned to me the footwell and the problem sounds like a flap problem possibly.

let me know what ya'll think about the problem, costs etc. any ideas, suggestions/advice, comments will be appreciated

kanadian

i had an issue that was opposite. i think i heard somewhere that post facelift cars do not have this function anymore but my car (2002 c240) was only blowing cold air from the face vents in the winter and hot air in the summer. it was the little blue dial in the center of the center vents. was not correctly attached internally and after 2 winters of cold air i finally figure it out and got some heat blowing and hopefully ac this summer if i fix my compressor ( assuming that it is broken)