Wife told me a few weeks ago there was clicking in her car when she changed the temperature, I figured it was an actuator, looking up some info it looked like a terrible weekend job, that weekend arrived after the parts showed up. The actuator in question was the lower one on the driver side, yaaaa, or so I thought. Replacing the actuator and I was careful not to change the position of the baffle gear when I removed the old broken device. Slapped the new one in, gave my monitor operator a high five, problem solved. Reconnected bat, turned on the ignition, changed the temp and the actuator still clicks.

Took everything apart, verified the gears were not stripped and the baffle door got moved and the starting location wasn't kept but not a big deal after spending the next few hours messing around with it. The actuator has a gear with a slice out of the base that meshes with the baffle gear, when the baffle gear peg rotates around the peg needs to meet at the right spot.

That's where my problems start, the actuator and baffle gear feel like they are separating. I screwed the actuator back in place and adjusting the temp I let my fingers float along the top of the gears, not sure the peg is causing the problem at this point though. I questioned if some of the plastic was broken so I took some good photos to share, as well as the actuator. Not sure I'm missing if something is broken or missing that jumps out at some of you other fine folks? Decided to call it at midnight and post in the morning, everything is fairly easy to access and the local shops wanted to charge a thousand bucks for this replacement, haha no thanks dudes. I've done such jobs before cheating parts out of the way to get your hand or a small child's hand up into the dash and replace some plastic with other plastic. This one has me stumped and could use some fellow QX80 owner advice on how to fix this without spending the money a shop wants to take out the whole dash? Seems obtuse atm, but then again, I've haven't fixed it, yet

Really hoping somebody has some good info or advice to help me out of this ditch.

The temp baffle turns freely by hand, no resistance. When I put on the fan last night and the engine was still warm I could tell it was drawing it from a heat source one direction and the other the heat would go away and it was noticeably cooler. There did not appear to be any reason the actuator would need to work hard to move the door.

Two possibilities. One is a bad new actuator, turn the temp dial with the actuator removed and see how much torque it's giving you. Should be a lot, it's a worm-gear drive and stopping it with your fingers should be difficult to impossible. The other is that the door is out of place. The best way to make sure a multi-turn actuator is in the right spot is to turn the temp dial all the way to the top or bottom (doesn't matter which) and then put the door manually into the same position. That way you know the actuator won't be trying to force the door in the wrong direction.

Definitely not the lack of torque from the new actuator, taking apart the old one I didn't even see any stripped, worn, or broken gears. Probably the door out of place, could the old actuator somehow have gotten it all messed up with fried electronics? Will go out and wiggle a scope in place so I can watch what's going on after it's back together again. I thought I had tried all the way up and all the way down positions for the baffle door, because if it isn't that this might really suck if the blend door post is broken or breaking. Thansk VStar650CL

Sewing Spuds wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:45 pm

Probably the door out of place, could the old actuator somehow have gotten it all messed up with fried electronics?

No, but the old one could have got stuck in a position that didn't match the temperature setting, leaving the new one in a position opposite where it should be. That never happens with keyed or splined actuators, but can easily occur with a gear drive. Match the door manually to the temperature setting and re-try it.

You were right, got the baffle door to sync up and screwed it back in. Keeping my scope on it I let it cycle and the baffle door gear seems to move a mm over and it will stop moving as the actuator continues to rotate. Once it stops and comes back it will catch the baffle gear again and put itself out of sync. Made sure the top hole of the actuator was in the alignment pin and re-tightened the screws making sure the actuator was as far over as possible. Looks almost like if I put a rubber band around the pin and the shaft it would keep that gear engaged with the actuator gear.

That gear shouldn't be able to jump, so something has to be worn out. But a gear is a gear, if a rubber band or a shim will fix it then I'd say go for it.

I'm having the same issue and I feel like there's a little play in baffle door gear. So you're saying you put a rubber band around the baffle door gear shaft and maybe the shaft where the screw goes in? How has it held up? ty