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Accessing air outlet control servo motor

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Care, Maintenance and Troubleshooting' started by pasadena_commut, Oct 9, 2020.

  1. pasadena_commut

    pasadena_commut Senior Member

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    How does one access the "air outlet control servo motor"? In the illustration on page AC-5 it is shown just to the left and up from the blower. (The air inlet and air mix control servo's are also shown mounted in the same plane, all on the passenger's side of the center console.) However, the only reference I found to removing it was under "disassembly", after the entire evaporator assembly has been removed from the car. At the very least I want to get access to its wiring so that the voltages on that connector can be measured.

    Also, there appear to be two actuators on the driver's side of the center console, what are they? The lower one has a complicated linkage with a bunch of flat long plastic pieces (at roughly knee level), and the upper one is tucked up into dash so that only the bottom and driver facing edges are really visible.
     
  2. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Boy, that is a lousy illustration. It's like the transporter coordinates were a fraction off and the outlet and mix servos got beamed into the middle of the heater. McCoy was right.

    Use the drawing on AC-145. The outlet and mix servos are the two you are asking about on the driver's side. The only one tucked on the other side by the blower is the inlet servo.
     
  3. pasadena_commut

    pasadena_commut Senior Member

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    Yes, AC-145 is much better. In fact, it does not look anything like the other drawing, but it does look like the car does!

    So the outlet servo is the one hardest to reach on the driver's side. How much of the dash needs to come apart to access it? I cannot get to the car right now but if memory serves the cable for the upper servo was not visible, only the mix servo cable was. I love how in the diagnostics the manual at AC-91 says "Remove the air outlet control servo", but there are no specific instructions for doing just that. Instead elsewhere it describes how to (basically) gut the entire dashboard, pull out the entire evaporator unit, and then and only then under "disassembly" pull off that servo.

    On a documentation related note - are the socket diagrams for the A/C Amplifier really upside down in the manual with respect to their orientation in the car? On my car at least the row of widely spaced pins are all closest to the floor, but in every illustration in the manual they are closest to the top of the page.

    I think the two most likely causes of the outlet selector failure on my car are that when the shop replaced the evaporator they either failed to plug the servo back in or they somehow messed up its little lever (not engaged properly, or snapped off.)
     
  4. rjparker

    rjparker Tu Humilde Sirviente

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    Why not get the shop that changed the evap fix it? Has it been too long since that repair and the problem was not noticed soon enough?
     
  5. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    Sometimes Toyota will publish the obvious "yeah, if you take the dash out, then it's easy" procedure, and sometimes there might still be a way that's less work, but you might have to find it yourself. yitznewton found a way to get the lower, mix servo out of there despite the ECU that's growing right next to it in the way of a screw. But I don't know that I've seen any chronicle of victory over the upper one.

    When Toyota realized they were going to have to recall a bunch of Gen 3s for brake accumulator replacements, they went so far as to invent a few new hand tools to provide to dealers to make it more possible to do with a shorter procedure than they had in the manual.
     
  6. pasadena_commut

    pasadena_commut Senior Member

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    It is a big Toyota dealer in the area and I'm sick of them. If it went back this would be the 4th A/C related trip, all resulting from the same initial problem of a refrigerant leak. I noticed this vent problem a month after the last repair, and I'm about 99.99% sure it was broken when they gave it back to me, but that was 7 months ago. Under normal circumstances I would have dealt with it then but what with the pandemic, and the huge number of people who work there (there must be 100 mechanics on duty in their huge repair area) I didn't also want to be sick from them.
     
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  7. pasadena_commut

    pasadena_commut Senior Member

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    I will take off the lower part of the dash and see if there is some way to at least access the wires going into it.
     
  8. rjparker

    rjparker Tu Humilde Sirviente

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    The problem is the repair is major to gain access. I guess I would at least take it back and ask them to fix it. By the way you can buy hospital grade 3M 1870 n95 masks on ebay for $10 right now.