Just Empty Every Pocket

Helped a buddy replace the evaporator and heater core on his '99 TJ Wrangler.

That's a remove entire dash deal.

Just like The Beast will be.

Unlike my car, someone has been in there doing wiring.

Someone who wasn't very good at it.  Worse than me!

It seemed to go pretty smooth until it came time to recharge the AC.

First we found that Marv's new AC gauges and lines leak like sieves.

His old set with the battered gauges work great and he ran home to get them.

That let us get the system evacuated and confirm that it'd hold a vacuum.

Then we couldn't get the compressor going.

Jumpering the pressure switches didn't engage the clutch, confirming that they were seeing pressure.

Jumpering the AC relay, however, did engage it.  That let us finish charging it up.

We did a whole lot of tracing wires until I found that the damned fuse for the AC relay was missing.  My buddy thinks that a fuse-tap got taken out of that slot and put back in another empty position in the fuse box.  Putting a 10a fuse in the AC relay spot made the AC work correctly!  HUZZAH! 

Then there was no heat.

The heater hoses were getting plenty warm, so it wasn't a blockage.

I speculated it was the blend door being hung up and the blend door motor was visible with the dash back together.  It was moving, maybe 10° when it needed to move 90°!

I pulled the motor and found that the blend door wouldn't move at all by hand.

We think that we got it jammed when we put the heater box back together.  It's a fiddly part of the reassembly.  To fix it would mean pulling the heater box back out and that means taking the whole damn dash apart again.

Summer is coming and winter is a long ways off.  He's leaving it until then.

Can't says I blames him.