Happy Friday everyone, I hope I don't get too much abuse about posting a Ford question. I know it isn't a Dodge but most of us own or know about other vehicles so I figured I would start here rather than go a join another vehicle support board on the web that I will likely only use once.
Here is the situation. A friend of mine has a 2006 Ford Escape. She gets lots of hot air with the hvac set on defrost, if she sets it to vents she gets hot air on the driver side and medium temp air on the passenger side and if she puts on the floor vent setting she gets nothing. She lives on the other side of Canada so I cannot 100% verify this but I assume that she just isn't getting air on the passenger side or floor, it isn't that she is getting cold air.
Does anyone have any suggestions about what her likely problem is? I assume it is some kind of blend door thingy, but I don't really know where to start helping her.

 

Sounds like blend doors. I bet if you go to the heater treater website you'll see ford has kits too.

 

Scotty, I was thinking blend door too but when I read their website, we might be looking in the wrong direction. It sounds like blend door does what the name says, adjusts the blend between hot and cold air. What is happening to my friend is more about the hvac not switching properly between defrost, vent and floor.

 

for the older escape, two things come to mind:

1. possible something dropped down the defrost vent.

2. pretty hard jolt or road bump (pothole) will jar the plastic vacuum door within the plastic air dam. hence the receding air temps. two distribution orifices come down driver/passenger side where a couple of sharp hand slaps may restore the proper balance. (fast fix)


anything else requires lower dash facia removal and that is not fun.

hope this simple stuff works for your friend.

 

Having fixed my blend doors twice, I've learned the term blend encompasses not only temp but function/direction like defrost. Heater treater refers to the other doors in the kit as mode doors.
If a mode door breaks it will effect direction.
I should've been more specific with it as I just call all the doors, blend doors.