Date:         Tue, 20 Sep 94 8:36:24 PDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Steve Johnson <sjohnson@pcocd2.intel.com>
Subject:      Re: vent question

> 
> 
> In my '81 westy, there are four vents on the horizontal part of
> the dash.  The two towards the center are I assume for defrosting, but
> not sure about the two at the edges, near the vent windows (NOT
> the ones on the vertical surface).  Anyway, these two vents I am
> talking about seem to have no lever or nob to turn the air off or
> on, or to deflect it in a certain direction.  Further, once the
> car is warmed up, they blow hot air all the time, no matter
> where I have set any of the other levers or nobs in any location
> in the car.  Do others of you have this?  Is this normal?  If
> so, doesn't it seem STRANGE????
> 
> 

Martha,

Let me tell you my story on this.  Oh, by the way, the vents you're
referring to are suppose to keep the side windows defrosted.  Now
on my camper, the top lever to the left closes off the defrosting
vents and directs all of the air flow elsewhere depending on the
position of 2 other levers and whether or not the driver/passenger
vents are open (the ones below on the face of the dash).  Move the
top lever to the right and the dash will recieve vented/heated air.

The next (2nd) lever down is the heat control.  Move it all the way
to the left and the heater is off.  Move it toward the right and
any vented air will be heated.

The next (3rd) lever down opens and closes the front floor vent.  
Move the lever to the left and any vented/fan air will come out
of the front floor vent.  Move it to the right and the floor
venting will decrease or close off if the lever is all the way
to the right.

The last (bottom) lever operates the venting to the rear vents
above the sliding door.  Move it to the left and vented air will
come out of those vents above the sliding door.  Move it to the
right and less or no vented air will come out of those same vents.

Now I don't know if VW maintained the ordering of the vent levers
the same or not, or even the same configuration.

The coding of my levers is as follows:

The Heater control has a blue dot on the left side and a red dot
on the right with graduated blue and red strips along the lever
travel.

The floor vent lever has a "v" arrow on the left and a "^" arrow
on the right.

The passenger area venting control lever has a grill symbol on the
left and I forgot what's on the right.

And I don't know what's on the defroster for symbols, but I'm sure
Joel knows ;).

Anyway,  I think from what you were saying before is that you're getting
hot air when you want it all closed off.  Well, I had this same
problem back before the list started and had told Joel about it.

I was getting hot air out of the defroster no matter how I moved the
levers.  I posted several times to the news net with no responses other
than the venting mechanism inside was still a "Pandora's Box" as far
as anyone was concerned and no one had checked it out yet.  Well, I
took it to the dealer to see if they could do anything.  The droid
there claimed it was some kind of heat actuator out of adjustment.
He also claimed that the vents were supposed to be open all of the
time.  Yeah right, that's what I thought it would say.  

So.  After some discussion with Joel, he got me to realize that I
could have a better look in side if I removed the ash tray (duh!!) 
as well as the radio.  I also removed the glove box, which is very 
easy to do I might add.  Once you take it out, you'll know right 
away how it goes.  I was able to figure out that the defroster control 
wire goes to an armiture that controls the flap inside the main vent
box.  Well as it turns out, the armiture control was loose and I
pulled it out and figured out that the that forces it to stay inside
the hole was not doing it's job.  So I pushed a small piece of 
cardboard between the armiture and the "holding pin" and pushed
it back in.  Worked like a champ!  I was now able to control the
defroster flap again and once the defrost was closed off, I could
close the driver/passenger facing vents and "Viola!" No outside
air coming in to heat up what I was trying to keep cool.  So 
much for the dealer droids theory.  That was Niello VW by the
way.  The other reason I will not go to them again.  

Thanks again to Joel (I thanked him before) for helping me gain
better access to the dash.

I'm sure your system can't be much different than mine.

If you need further assistance, let me know.

Cheers!

Steven

sjohnson@pcocd2.intel.com