S14 Climate Control Swap and Relocation

[DeXteR]

Since the S14 climate controls are totally electric, they can easily be transplanted to another location in the cabin. At worst, it's a matter of lengthening wires and mounting it. I decided that I wanted to relocate my climate controls in my S14 so that I could mount a couple gauges where the controls used to be. I did some searching on here as well as on Google and was unable to turn up anything helpful. Sure, there are pictures of relocated controls with hacked up bezels, but I was hoping for something a little cleaner. I did see mention somewhere of someone using a Maxima climate control, but there was little information and no pictures.

So I decided to tackle the project blind. I have the control wires relocated and have my gauges temporarily installed with a plastic sheet that I hand-formed. What a pain that was - hopefully someone else can make a pod or else I'm going to end up doing some fiberglass work.

With the controls out, I got an idea of what I needed to do. I want to put the controls in one of the din slots with the radio. The wires will reach down there without having to lengthen them - at least for me anyway. I recently had the complete interior out of the car, so I may have broken or removed some clips or fasteners without realizing it.

One observation here is that the climate control unit does not fit inside the din slots as it is too wide. This may require modification of the unit, the brackets, or both. Even if you get the unit mounted in the din, the face is wider than the bezel opening, so that would at least need to be trimmed as well.

The next stop was eBay. It's the best place I know of where you can usually find multiple listings for parts you're looking for that also have multiple pictures. I started looking for interior pictures of Maximas, Sentras, Altimas, and other Nissans from the mid 90's to find similar climate control layouts. Then I started looking for the climate controls themselves. I ended up purchasing units from a Maxima and an Altima as they looked similar and appeared to have the same wire connections in the back of the unit as the climate control from the S14.

I am not interested in doing a digital climate control setup on this car, but if it's something you've all ready done or would like to do, the Maxima had a digital control option. Also, most of the Infiniti brand models of this time period were equipped with digital climate controls. There may be options there for you.

Now that I have three climate control units to choose from, it's time for some comparisons.

Here is the S14 climate control:


Here is the Maxima unit:


Finally, the Altima version:


The following pictures are of the three units together. In each view, the Maxima is the top or right, the S14 is in the middle, and the Altima is the bottom or left.




Then I took some measurements and wrote them down.

I'll type these up and add them to the text of this post later so if the picture gets lost, the data will still be visible.

As can be seen in the pictures, the Maxima unit is bigger in body and face, so this isn't really a good option. The Altima unit has a slightly smaller face and I prefer the shape of the face in the din position. I'm not sure what the extra connections are for in the back, but I'm sure the schematics will reveal that.

This is where I'm at so far. I haven't even test-fitted the Altima unit yet. I'll update more as progress is made.

[pepesilvia]

I relocated my climate control to the second din under the radio like you talked about. Your right though, the face is a little too wide, but it actually fit really well after the bezel was trimmed, and a new, untrimmed radio bezel only costs $65. Also there was no re-wiring. I think its the easiest thing to do, but i'm still interested in what you're gonna do.

[DeXteR]

I took the time to study the schematics and diagrams for each climate control. Here are the screenshots for the wiring diagrams. They're from my phone, so hopefully they're good enough. If not, you can always get them from the appropriate year and model at www.NICOclub.com/FSM.

S14:


Altima:


Maxima:


From these, you can find that they are essentially the same. Main differences are pins 25, 27, 28, and 10. These deal with A/C. The S14 has a recirculation relay, the Altima has a PTC, and the Maxima has a thermal transister. If you have A/C, you may need to dig deeper and get creative as I'm not getting involved with that since I don't have A/C.

Moving on, there are also several pages of schematics that you need to sift through for each unit to get the pin outs. Instead of posting 15 pages out of the FSMs, I just sketched them out.



As you can see, the S14 and Altima match up nearly perfectly - especially if you're not concerned with the A/C. You can also see that the Maxima isn't even close. If for some reason you wanted to use that one, you'll have to re-pin the connectors, which are quite small.

I have omitted the fan control pinouts because they are each exactly the same. You may also be wondering about the extra plugs on the back of the Altima unit. Those are for the A/C switch and PTC. Again, A/C components that I'm not concerned about.