Date:         Sun, 21 Jul 1996 13:32:29 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         John Sweet <sweet@unrrts.com>
Subject:      Re: Warm air from under the dash.

Hmm.  Before I replied to this, I should've read all the other
replies:

> The heater control valve is probably stuck open... The control cable
> can get bent and then it will never be able to close the valve all
> the way.

> I have to re-adjust the ends of the control cables... The travel
> allowed by the control arm in the dash is not enough... to go from
> fully opened to fully closed.

> ... the heater controls... can be confusing for new owners.

> ... there is some insulation to shield the heat from the rad.  fan -
> possibly this has come loose...

> ...the flow control valve for the front heater core is out of
> adjustment...

> On mine the cable for the heater valve needed to be adjusted.

What I'm getting from all this (and what you should too, Gordo) is
that it's a complex system with several points of failure.  My advice
to you is to go from the simplest to the most complex fixes one-by-one
until you finally get to one that works.  You know, troubleshoot.

Before I was able to narrow the problem down to a defective valve, I
had to go through the following:

  - Went over and over the instructions for the (non-intuitive) dash
    heat/air vent/footwell/rear controls to make sure I was doing it
    right. 

  - Traced the control slider cables to see what they were actually
    controlling.

  - Checked that the temperature slider (the one that goes from a blue
    dot to a red dot) was actually moving the cable in its sheath, not
    just bending it somewhere.

  - Checked that where the cable attached to the valve, it was
    actually opening and closing the valve all the way when I moved
    the slider.

At each step of the way, I found and fixed little problems:
Reconnected an air hose that had popped loose of its mount.
Re-clamped the heater control cable sheathing where it had worked its
way out of the clamp.  But still the problem persisted.

Now, since I replaced the valve, everything's been hunky-dory.  But I
never would have started right off by replacing it -- too expensive,
too much work, too many easier and cheaper things were also broken.

What I take away from all this is, thank heavens I work on my own car!
No $60/hour mechanic would have gone through these steps as
thoroughly, and if he had, it would have cost me hundreds o bucks to
fix a cheesy stupid problem like, "My heat won't turn off."

And if that is true, think how much more it applies to problems in
more complex systems of your car.  Learn it.  Do it yourself.  Be
happy. 

J