Yet Another 4th Gen Blend Door Thread

My daughter's 2018 Prius was blowing only hot air for the last few weeks. Upon testing, she was able to determine it was the blend door actuator through trouble codes 41 and 48. We found a video that shows the climate control being blank for quite a while upon startup. Then, you press Auto-Recir until the error codes pop up.

She ordered a blend door from an online dealer for about $170 and a right-angle carb tool that a guy in a youtube video used for $82. Having done it once, I do believe I could do it with a 1/4" ratcheting wrench, a 1/4" #2 Phillip's bit and a little magnet on the back to keep it from falling out.


It was a royal pain to do it, but I got it done in about 4 hours. An hour of that was searching for my lost hex bit that fell into the dash. I did take the glove box, lower panel, lower dash and radio out to get a better view. I was under the mistaken impression the hard screw was at the very top. I found it to be in the very back and that would have saved me a lot of time. In this picture, the top hole is for alignment. The left hole is actually visible if you can get your head deep into the footwell.

I discovered that at 63, I'm getting too old to stand on my head in the floorboard to get at small things in the dash. Despite that, I got it done. The absolute hardest part for me was getting the unyielding actuator in the top left to line up with the tab it slides onto. Once I got that one to fit, the other one was easy to manipulate as it moved freely.

If I had to do it again, I would have replaced every last one of those Phillips screws with hex-heads to make the job MUCH easier. Too late for me as I've already put it back together and if it lasts another 7 years, I'll be in my early 70s and she'll have to find someone else to do it.

Picture of the carnage.