Climate control swap

[ryanr623]

Im sick of my electronic climate control only working when it wants to. Since these are notorious for breaking, is the manual climate control a direct swap?

I can also send mine to a "repair place" to be repaired for $199, guaranteed for a year. But im not really too keen on not having any sort of climate control for up to a month while they work on it.

 

[Qyota]

Definitely not a direct swap. But I don't know how hard it would be to retrofit. Can't you just not use the "auto" feature? That's what I do...and it works fine just manually controlling temp and fan speed.

 

[ryanr623]

Definitely not a direct swap. But I don't know how hard it would be to retrofit. Can't you just not use the "auto" feature? That's what I do...and it works fine just manually controlling temp and fan speed.

These are so fukced. My fresh air/recirc button, my auto button, and my off button doesnt work. Everything else works but need to push rather hard sometimes.

Ah well, they sell new ones on ebay for $200

 

[Qyota]

Mine actually works fine (knock on wood). I never use the auto feature, and the fan speed control knob doesn't exactly work perfectly, but it works well enough. I guess I got a "good" one!

 

[CajunRunner]

I do not think you can swap it for a manual control without replacing the entire air conditioning and heating system. My old style '97 manual HVAC has 4 push/pull cables that run from the levers on the dash to cam mechanisms on the outside of the blower unit and heater unit under the dash, and the water control valve on the engine side of the firewall. If you have an automatic/electrically controlled HVAC, then all those manual cams are replaced with electrically driven damper mechanisms. You'll probably have to repair or replace your electric control panel.

 

[wdhigh]

I have a 99 with the same crap going on. I pretty much leave my ac on year round. When I turn the temp up I have no issues and actually keeps my windows from fogging. As a precaution I bought a used one on ebay last year from a salvage yard in the north east. $149 was what I paid and he gave me like a 30 or 90 day warranty to test it. Well one thing led to another and I never installed it since I can still force mine to work 95% of the time. Ended up wrapping it up and storing it in my closet hopefully as a backup when mine reaches the point of not working at all.

This is the one thing on my 4runner that I hate with a passion. These all have issues it seems and new ones are $1k from japan.