96 A6 blower regulation flaps gets stuck? (stays cold / warm / whatever)

Hi,

I have a 96 S6 and I had this problem. It's probably the flapper motor thats in the dash. You get to it from the outside by removing the cover in front of the wiper mechanics. I actually had this fixed by the dealer before I had the ETKA and Bentley CDs but it should be something you can do yourself.

What has probably happened is the connecting rod from motor to flapper is disconnected. Easily remedied but my dealer charged me for a new part ($300 Canadian).

Good luck.

Tony

96 S6.

Thanks, thats spot on,

Here is what I also found in the mean time. I searched a bit more last night and found references to the diag info you can get from the control unit. The AC control say that the temprature flap is not working... set point is not the same as the feedback pot. Also found pictures of the procedure to get at the flap motor.

But I wonder if it can be a fully disconnected rod since I do get colder air from it as the summer approches. Only now there is no heat early in the morning when that is needed.I guess that will be obvious when its opened.

I would prefere not to let the dealer here do this as my A6 is imported (used from Germany) and the dealers seems to revenge the lost sales by overcharging repair costs for those that have these. (or perhaps they just rip everyone off how whould I know) Paid ~200 USD (equivalent) for them to hock the door opner cable back on, found out later when it happened again that I could fix it in 5 minutes. and _no_ it was not on the lower end of the cable I did fix that on the other door.. gaaahhh .. bl...y croocks

Anyway thanks. Now I know it will be fixed (> Hi,

I have an A6 2.6 SE 1996

For a time the rapid defrost function was not working. I could hear the fan going full speed but nothing coming out of the central windscreen outlet. Then it started to work ok but very little cold air was coming from the dash a/c vents. Now the dash vents are working but not the rapid defrost.

Seems like a similar problem.

Also had Ignition switch return switch go. This is really scary, Grinding noises from gearbox and lots of electrics not working. Glad to say new switch was just £25.00 and I fitted it myself. I understand this is a common fault on A6.

Regards David.

An update on what I found,

Opened the small electric motor running the temperature flap, everything seems to be OK nothing stuck or damaged.

(shows how its done) Put it together again and test it, seems to still be stuck. I dig out the control unit from the dash, open it and look over the electronics (I work in electronics) nothing looks broken, power the control up on the bench at work, all drivers for the motors seems to be OK. (I used serious lab equipment, you really want to know what you do when attempting this since it is expensive if you short something and breaks it (more)) ) hmmmm... Then it should be the wireing to the motor. All those (4 motors) are together in one plug to the control paired nicely. I use an multimeter to check for 10-40ohm loads. Everything seems still OK... (this last measurment was the first I should have done had I known what to look for, after checking the diagnostics display) Since nothing seems wrong I put it all togheter. now it works very nicely.... My guess is it was a bad connection in one of the connectors, or secondary that the electric motor was slightly stuck but me messing with it caused it to get better.

The motors can also be checked by applying 7V directly on the connector near the blower (no dismantling). My guess is it will work nicely running the motor with a 9V small battery (like in smoke alarms) then afterwards, the potentiometer for the flap should read something different from before in diagnostics.

Found links to diagnostics from the control system after posting my first request.

code for errors was: 8.5 stuck temperature flap.After powering it on the bench it desided all its sensors where temporarily in error,(disconnected) not so strange since the whole car was missing.after a few days the error code is now 0.0 no errors... and it still works. :-)

Got a responce from someone that had defective output drivers in the control unit, so apparently that can happen too. Any problem with motor,wires,drivers, control of drivers that cause a prolonged missmatch between the pot reporting the flaps position and the position the control wants to have will be reported as a stuck flap.

I learned a lot, and I'm impressed what the diagnostics have information about, and can figure out.

Thanks for all the help.