Flapper door install done!

[kelly1]

Why do we do this to ourselves? buy something older and spend $$ and LOT of time bringing it back up to like-new standards. We could have bought something much newer by the time we were done.

Who cares!!...I love turning wrenches and not having a car payment! lol

Flapper doors are installed and air cfm must have at least doubled. Nice!!

 

[Monstar_est87]

Nice... N e Pictures of the progress..?

 

[kelly1]

I have pics of most of the disassembly except pics of the dash rotated back. I stopped taking pics at that point and it was 2 a.m. when I finally got the flappers installed. I took no pics of reassembly. Was pretty tired at that point. I'm kicking myself now but will post what I have later today.

 

[95BlackTahoe]

Looking forward to learning more about this...Keep us posted!

Thanks

Shawn

 

[kelly1]

Okay, I did this repair several years ago on another tahoe I used to own but I used the following link as a good refresher on the job.

http://www.thetruckstop.us/forum/sh...-defrost-door-hvac-flow-distribution-flap-box

The same info might be on this site as well but in my seemingly long search this is some of the first and best info I found. I believe the link states that the correct way to do this job is to vacuum down the a/c and actually remove the hvac box. This is what I did a few years ago. I no longer have access to a good vacuum pump to recharge the a/c myself and am money poor after other upgrades I've recently done so I did as the guy in the above link did and trimmed my flapper box to fit. Wasn't too bad at all and I didn't have to remove the dash, just tilt it back. I also placed some 3M strip caulk along the back semi-circle area of the flapper box where I trimmed the flange.

You can see in the attached pics the gaps around the original doors. My prior tahoe actually had one of the doors fall out of the box. If you do the job, make sure you buy the 3rd lower flapper door as well. Transfer the old foam seal to the new assembly or just buy a new seal.

 

[kelly1]

couple more pics.

one other thing, I removed the two screws from the firewall just behind the engine that retain the hvac box in the area I was working. This gave me just enough wiggle to pop that 4th clip off the front (firewall side) right side of the box.

Note: This is technically my 3rd time doing this as I was reminded how after installing the hvac box the first time a few years ago and putting the entire dash back together I had somehow tore a hole in the evaporator and had to pull everything back apart again to replace it. Ahhh, the big Man upstairs does enjoy the humor I provide him.