Saw a u tube on this. The fly by wire nature of the new cars is a factor. There is a little plastic dingus deep inside the dash of these cars that redirects the fan flow to where the driver wants it. Being plastic it fails. The tell is a clicking sound when you set, say, the defroster, you know, so you can see. The cost of getting at this thing is somewhere near three grand. The part itself is cheap.
Yup the blend door actuator. The entire dashboard has to be removed to change it. This used to be controlled by a mechanical cable.
I just went through that. The damn thing sounded like a machine gun. There’s a video on YouBoob where the guy says it’s easy, should take only 20 minutes. Yeah, right. Maybe if I had two elbows in my right arm.
The sunroof failed on my 2014 Ford Expedition back around 2016. To fix it, they had to completely tear down the roof liner, some of the dashboard, and take out the seats. It was a $3,500 repair! The car had gone out of warranty after I made the repair appointment but before the actual appointment date! I could have brought it in the same day I made the appointment, but the shop was full for three weeks. The dealer I bought it from (used) went to bat for me and got it covered under warranty. Whew!
My Lincoln had a motor in the hvac system that would split the output shaft, making it default to defrost mode.
A simple 1/2” ferrule for soft copper pipe, slid over the broken piece, permanently fixed the issue, but I had to pull the entire dash apart in order to move the related components far enough to get that positioning motor out.
I spent nearly 7 hours to install a 35 cent part.
It’s not just the computer thing, it’s just how light, compact, and interlaced everything has to be in order to fit into the ever-smaller cars we are told to buy.
I had to pull the complete front bumper and grille assembly off a Mercedes yesterday to change a compound headlight assembly!