PontiacBonnevilleClub.com

im considering getting my wife a different 3800 powered car, one without electronic climate control. the climate control does not act properly and i personally do not think its the "airmix" actuator. the problem exists when you first start the car the display starts flashing. wait until the display stops having fits, cycle heat all of the way to cold and back to hot again and the car will heat up. with the glovebox removed you can see the linkage move on the airmix actuator which tells me that it is working. my guess is that the programer is not working properly. we have had this car for about a year and for the $1200 we paid for it, it has been a very good car despite some annoying issues it has never left us stranded. the airmix actuator does not seem to be easily accessible as it is behind some metal brackets that are not easily removed inside the glovebox. if this was going to be a failure prone item why did GM have to stuff it where you had little access. i still think that if it was an airmix actuator that you would never get heat no matter what you did to the controls, and if i play with the controls car will be warm. my wife moans and groans that she shouldnt have to do that, personally i dont feel like tearing the whole dash apart to get to it.

so what's the verdict, is it the airmix actuator or not, and if it is how do i easily remove the stupid thing?

Just because you can see the arm on the "airmix" actuator moving doesn't mean it's not faulty. One way to test is to stick a screwdriver or something through the hole in the brace and try to move the arm manually. You don't need to go Hercules on it, but if you can move it at all your actuator is on its way out. Rarely is the HVAC programmer at fault on these cars.

Read this to get an idea on changing the actuator. It's a PITA, but not impossible and cheaper than a new car. Even if you decide not to change the actuator, the article will give you some understanding of the failure.

http://trialsnuts.com/ecc.pdf

What year do you have? A few years, you can pull a code from the HVAC display.

is there a way to disconnect the air-mix regulator and just make it so it's hot all of the time, regulating heat output simply by controlling fan speed. i really need heat and at present i really dont want to be messing around with this air-mix regulator. i really wish this car did not have this "feature", its more of an annoyance then a feature. what i wouldnt give to have simple have vacuum controlled manually operated heat, the type GM used 30 years ago... so simple it would be the last thing on the car to have ever had a problem.

is there at least a way to force the car to produce heat? as far as replacing the airmix regulator, im guessing it involves removing the cover over the heater core as glove box removal alone does to seem to give me the necessary access

Yes, actually, there is a fairly easy way to manually control the air mix. There is an ancient post on how to do this, but I don't have time to track it down. Basically what you do is disconnect the actuator from the door. If you look at picture 15 in the link provided earlier, you will disconnect the air mix control arm from the air mix door. You can do this through the hole in the dash brace. Then take a piece of stiff wire and loop it around the arm of the air mix door so you can manually move it and secure it in the position you desire. This is illustrated in picture 18, which was pirated from the aforementioned ancient post.