Heater efficiency
 

Still sorting out the niggles with D2, here is another problem that needs to be fixed.

Dont know if to post here or interior electrics, so here will do for now.

Basically the fan output from the vents is pretty poor even with the fan on full blast and the vents open and the button pressed to open it on the climate control.

I did some playing around in the office carpark, and discovered that if I switch to recirculate mode then the output from the vents increases dramatically for the same fan speed. Googling suggests that maybe the flaps on the heater box under the bonnet are not opening fully and thus not letting much air through.

I found a thread the other day where someone fixed a similar issue by doing something with these flaps but I cannot find the thread again, and I don't think it mentioned what they did.

Whilst not an issue at the moment, as I do get heat just not much of it. This June the car is due to be driven to the Costa del Sol and near 30c heat so I need the aircon to have as much output as possible.

The thread you are probably looking for is HERE +++

Thanks for the reply,

Which flap does that motor control, I think my symptoms maybe different in that I have no weird noises or similar behind the dash apart from when I press the control buttons to open / close the vents and these seems to work as they should as long as I am in recirculation mode. Looking back at the reams of paperwork that came with my car, Amersham Audi replaced the recirculation valve 32K miles ago in 2008.

When the fan in my sons polo stopped 'working', I replaced the pollen filter. It was fine after that.

I have been under the bonnet this morning, I removed the cover from the centre blower motor area and observed the 2 flaps.

On recirculation both are closed as you would expect, but switch to normal mode and they only move slightly so not much air gets through.

Both the flaps feel very easy to move and kind of flop around suggesting they are not connected to the motor properly, and if I manually move them so they are open then the interior air flow is excellent. However switching between recirc and normal puts them back in the almost closed position.

I have identified the control motor, and trying to remove it from the side of the box is proving somewhat difficult as getting at one of the screws is somewhat awkward.

another update, I took the motor off the side of the flaps and the motor spindle seems to be nice and tight.

The small plastic drive connection between the motor and flaps also seems to be pretty secure but when mated back together there seems to be some play somewhere. I took the plastic drive off the flaps and placed it onto the motor drive, there is no apparent play at this point.

Running out of time I have put it all back together, and of course its behaving just as before. I have noticed that the flaps move to different positions, so if I switch between recirc and normal a few times it is possible to get the flaps to be open enough to let air flow through.

Found a thread on audiworld with someone having the same problem, and there is a video showing the flaps and mine move nowhere near this amount.

http://forums.audiworld.com/showthread.php?t=2813312