ac blower things to check before suspecting vacuum pods

[St3ve]

The far left hand blower (next to the door) had low (to almost nil) air volume. I saw a few postings about replacing the vacuum blower pods and cringed at the idea of having to take out the whole dash, people say it's an 8 hour job.

So I decided that instead of just leaning over to the left of the car (right hand drive) and holding my hand there, the next step should be to physically inspect what was going on behind the vertical/horizontal vent direction shifters/slats.

I noticed that even though the blower volume dial was turned to full the flap door (behind the direction slats) was not open. I stuck a bic pen through the air direction slats and forced the door flap up, it clicked into place, fully open and now works fine. Opens and closes like it used to.

So before ripping out the dash to check vacuum pods, try that little trick.

Oh and if you're dash lights go black, check the trip meter switch, the one that you use to reset the mileage, turn it left to right and it doubles up as a dimmer switch... As '91 300CE just politely explained to this twit who currently feels a fool.