2006 climate control actuator fails

[Mark Rinker]

Driver reports today that the 2006 K3500 is making heat only on his feet, regardless of knob position/setting.

Anyone else seen this? Simple fix or dealership visit? Was it covered under warranty?

[DmaxMaverick]

Depends on the miles. If you're less than 36K, it will be covered under the B to B warranty. If you have another truck with the same system, you can swap out the control head to diagnose it. If not, you'll have to go through the diagnostic process to ID the failed part. It's likely a door actuator, which can be a PITA to get to. With a pinout diagram, you can read the actuators from the control head connector to determine which one has failed. The control heads are pricey, but easy/quick to replace.

If it's going to be a while before a fix, the defog should be a concern. Use some Rain-X Anti-Fog on the interior glass to prevent fogging. If you use it on the door glass, be sure to clean the inside window wipers in the doors. The stuff works best if you use brake cleaner to clean the glass before application on the door windows. Don't use brake cleaner on the windshield glass, use ammonia Windex (original Windex, not that vinegar stuff).

[EdHale]

Last August coming back to Atlanta from Tennessee, my system started putting out heat through the a/c vents and I mean "HEAT". You could have cooked an egg at any vent. No matter what I did I couldn't stop it. I finally closed all of the vents and put duct tape over the center one and made it home. Both right and left actuators were bad and were replaced under warranty.

[Mark Rinker]

After the truck was shut off and restarted later in the day, it returned to normal operation.

Always have to consider the value of the equivalent to CTL/ALT/DEL with todays computer controlled systems...:D

[EdHale]

Restarting mine last summer had no effect at all. Once it started putting out the heat, it continued.