Tristan

Hi, I have searched and found two post to calibrate a new actuator. One had me press the ac and recirculating button 3 timed in 2 seconds. The other had me removing the 10 amo fuse. Neither worked.
What is the best way to recalibrate the actuator in a 2008 equinox?
Thanks

Bern

Connect allpreviously disconnected components.
Start thevehicle.
Wait40 seconds for the HVAC control module to self-calibrate.
Do not adjust any controls on the HVAC control module while the HVAC control module is self-calibrating

ASE Doc

New to the forum. I've done the blend door replacement three times. Once on my wife's 2006 LT and twice on customer's vehicles. Not my favorite job. I've diagnosed a few more, but the customers declined the expensive repair. Labor on this job is 8.5 hours. The last one I did took an entire day from 9 am to 9:30 pm and as a professional, I've done dozens of HVAC case pulls. The Equinox is just one of those that's especially involved. Yesterday my wife told me the car had lost heat again. After shaking my head and groaning for a minute or five, I checked the actuator last night and it is moving as commanded. Most likely the OE temp door that I installed two years ago has broken. I do a little trick on them, installing a thin spring steel hose clamp, 3/8" size, over the splined area that often splits open. This prevents future failure of that area. What this means is that if the door has broken, it's broken at the shaft itself just inside the case at the drive end. The door generally breaks at one of these two places.

It's unfortunate that GM never updated the door to prevent this failure. I know of other makes and models with common temp door problems. The early '00s Dodge trucks were one. Chrysler updated the door, replacing the plastic door with a forged aluminum part that will not break. The newer GMs use a coupler between the actuator and door. The coupler will break before the door, making the lost heat issue much less painful to repair.

I did want to note a couple of things that I didn't see mentioned in this thread. One is the availability of a repair kit, the same kit used by GM for their repair of many of the broken temp doors covered by the above mentioned Special Service bulletin 11135. The tool kit includes everything needed to repair most broken temp doors. It works on any door where either the splined hub has split open or the end of the shaft has broken off at the drive end. Dorman offers the kit and I see it on Amazon for right at $90. You'll want to remove the actuator and inspect the door before you buy the kit to be sure it will work in your case. Dorman also offers an updated temp blend door, They did what GM should have done and redesigned the troublesome door. They installed a metal sleeve in the spline area, just like my hose clamp trick. They also beefed up the shaft where it joins the door and where it often breaks, like mine probably has. This redesign addresses the two most common failure points of the door. I have thought about fabricating a door from aluminum, the way that Chrysler did for the Dodge trucks years ago. For now though, if need be, I think I'll go with the Dorman part. Amazon has it for about $29.

ASE Doc

EDIT: Thought it might be more helpful if I include part numbers. The Dorman blend door is P/N 902-500. The repair kit is P/N 902-600.

ASE Doc

I did the repair on my wife Leah's Equinox last night after work. I used the Dorman P/N 902-600 repair kit. I first verified that the door shaft was still in place on the driver's side of the case. Then I followed the kit instructions to perform the repair. The kit includes a hole saw and guide for cutting the hole larger around the drive side of the door shaft. The hole saw does its job okay. One problem though is that plastic doesn't cut very clean. You end up with alot of plastic slag in and around the hole. After cleaning up as much of the slag as possible, from a hole that is still pretty small and hard to reach, I test fit the repair sleeve. I found that the sleeve, at least in my case doesn't fit cleanly over the end of the broken shaft. The shaft end looked like it was broken off clean enough but still I had to peel away bits of plastic to get to where I could start the sleeve over it. Following the instructions, I greased up the repair sleeve and pushed it over the broken shaft end. It went in a little hard, which is good I guess that it's a tight fit. It didn't end up going on as straight as I would have liked, probably due to the broken end being a little jagged. I was able to work with it some to get it straight enough to get the actuator installed. Before installing the actuator I made sure the door moved smoothly. Once it was all back together, I ran the actuator calibration. The system finished calibration and the temp control is working fine.

Will it hold up? That's yet to be seen. Maybe next time it will at least break in the summer when I will have a little time to schedule the repair for a free weekend. It seems like the repair should hold up pretty well though. The repair sleeve is thicker than the original shaft, obviously as it fits a larger hole. The new thicker shaft end provides more material around the splines where the original shaft tends to split open. The sleeve is also fairly thick where it slides over the shaft and it slides on about 1.5". This provides pretty decent support for the shaft and it seems to produce a strong assembly. I wish it had come out straighter than it did. That would have taken alot more digging and maybe some filing on the end of the broken shaft to get it cleaner. I was working against the clock and my helper needed to get home. The job does require a helper, working from the driver's side, to align the door shaft so that you can install the repair sleeve. You could probably do the job alone but you would have to remove the front seats and maybe the console to make it possible to reach around.

All in all, I'd say that I'm satisfied with this repair kit, but I wish it was a cleaner repair. It would be hard to get the shaft end much cleaner than I did mine, working through the small opening. Of course, once you get the sleeve pushed on. Pulling it back off to better prepare the broken end isn't really an option. If the actuator ends up failing, I'll now that it's likely due to misalignment of the sleeve end. At that point, I'll need to replace the door. As it is, I could have waited until next weekend and done the door but Leah uses her car everyday. She's already suffered through a week with no heat and it's getting cold here. Today she has heat and all is well. The job took 3.5 hours, which compared to over 11 hours for door replacement, wasn't so bad.

Melissaleeg123

If u happen to find out please let me know! Everything is so complicated with my 07 Equinox! B4 this car I NEVER even heard of not being able to add trans fluid or not filling your radiator or having to get codes ready to find out what's wrong with your Ac BC ur Ac light blinks 3 times when you try turning it on.

ruley73

Complicated?! Compared to what? A 2007 Equinox is still pretty simple. You don't add coolant to the radiator, you just add it to the reservoir instead. You can still add transmission fluid too, albeit the dipstick is difficult to access.

As far as the A/C not working goes, does the indicated outside temp (displayed near odometer) seem accurate? If it's not accurate, that could be why the A/C won't work. The A/C is disabled when the ambient air temp drops below ~38°F. The ambient air temp sensor is cheap and very easy to replace. It's attached to the frame just ahead of the radiator & A/C condenser on the passenger side. It's visible and easily accessible from underneath the vehicle.

If the temp looks good you have other issues that need to be properly diagnosed. It could just be low on refrigerant, which is normal for a vehicle that old. Even when everything is OK it's perfectly normal to gradually lose refrigerant over a long period of time. Generally, about 0.5-1 ounce per year is considered normal.

FWIW, we just had to have 8 oz of refrigerant added to ours earlier this year. The A/C had never been serviced prior to that. It had been working just OK prior to this, but couldn't keep up on hot days. Recharging it made a big difference. If yours is too low on refrigerant, the A/C won't turn on.