All air blows through defrost

[Steve Eastham]

96 contour 2.5 litre. No matter what I set the controls on the air will only blow out the defrost vents. Heat and a/c work fine just won't blow out panel or floor vents. Not sure where to start. Read somewhere that ford had a recall due to wiring issue with blower controls but don't know how to tell if that is the problem. Any suggestions appreciated

 

[royalblue]

you likely have an issue with a vacuum motor that controls air direction

 

[ContourGuy9817]

pop your hood and find the grey vacuum line...its melted shut and brokeded...7 dollars to fix if you do yourself...the other half is underneath by the linkage and heatshield.

Steve-O

 

[projectSHO89]

It's either a loss of vacuum as described above (no vacuum = default to defrost) or, like mine, the actuator of the vacuum motor has come off the bellcrank arm for the door inside the plenum. The actuator is cylindrical and is located just above the gas pedal. Mine popped off numerous times until I finally hit the end of the plastic stud with a hot soldering iron.

 

[Stuart-Grant]

That's my car ContourGuy9817 posted the pictures of, and his fix definitely works. Though, on NECO it has been identified that the tube can just melt shut, rather than melt shut and then into two pieces, or it can melt into two pieces rather than melt shut. Any of these scenarios will cause the system to only blow through the defrost no matter what setting you have it at. You can also have problems under the dash, as projectSHO89 says.

One way to test it is to use either cigarette or some other smoke producer, go in under the passenger side dash, behind the glove box is a module with a vacuum hose connected to it. Pull the hose off with the engine running, if you get suction on the hose then your problem is under the dash, if you do not, the problem is likely to be the grey vacuum tube has melted shut, possibly melting in two like mine did.