1996 Volvo 850 Turbo Wagon – ECC type electronic heating cooling system. Not sure if the same on the manual type controls.
I thought I might offer some options on stuck flapper doors on the floor and defrost flaps being stuck in the down position with no heat on the floor. This is for anybody searching for some help. There is a thin rubber seal around the flap doors that I guess melts to the plastic. This is the stuck flap door.
First I pulled the lower molding panel off under the dash, removed the glove box, and unscrewed the damper motor that connects to the floor/defrost flaps. It was a real pain in the butt getting the lower T15 screw out on the bottom right. I couldn’t get a torx screw driver to line up and the space was too small for a torx socket. I ended up buying a set of torx keys (come in a pack like the allen keys with long shafts and a 90 on the other. I used the long shaft to unscrew the torx screw and it came off easy. Be sure you put a paper towel underneath so you don’t lose the screw down below.
Once the motor was off I tried to turn the shaft that the motor was inserted into that moves the flaps up and down by hand. Just my luck, it wouldn’t budge. This stuck flap also caused the motor to break the shaft like many have had happen and is documented elsewhere. I repaired this after getting the flaps to move again.
I certainly didn’t want to remove the entire dash to try and fix the problem with the stuck flaps so I tried this method:
Where the air comes out on the floor on the bottom of the dash there are two channels that air flows down passenger side and drivers side. You can look up these channels with a flashlight. The shaft is at a slight angle and the black flapper door will be on the right hand side (passengers channel). I took a sturdy wooden dowel cut to length to fit up the channel and lined it up on the flap. I pushed hard until the flap came loose. In mine the flap on passengers side was the one stuck and not both. If both are stuck I believe you could do the same on the drivers side I would assume or visa versa.
Once this popped loose I could then turn the shaft by hand easily. Problem solved on not getting heat on the floor during the winter. Reinstalled the motor on the repaired shaft and put everything back together.
Hope this helps someone with cold feet in the winter.
NOTE: it was below freezing when I did this. I put a small electric heater in the rear of the wagon to warm temps up enough for glue to dry and let it sit for 24 hrs.