Can the Level of Heat from the heater be adjusted?

Here's the resistor you'll need. Yeah, you'll buy a pack of like 5 or 6 even though you only need one.



Next pry the "shark fin" shaped bezel from the front of the grab handle out. A 10mm socket will be needed to remove the grab handle. Rotate it from the bottom out away from the dash to remove it.

Pop the chrome ring from around the shifter up gently, then carefully remove the chrome ring from the inner black ring at the tabs.



Now you'll start to remove the "boomerang" from the dash. The chrome rings around the gauges pop straight off toward you. Be sure to lower the steering wheel all the way down for the next step - removing the black "tubes" that go down to the gauge faces.

You'll need to work around the outside, squeezing inward and gradually working the tubes free..



Removing the power point plug near the shifter is done by pushing in the lock as shown
below.




Remove the connectors and lift the boomerang out of your way.




I cut away the tape surrounding the wiring to free up slack to work with and stripped the light blue/black stripe line and "tinned" with solder. I also "pre-soldered" the resistor ends, after shortening them, as I was soldering "in air" with no way to hold both pieces together and holding the soldering iron also.

I put a shop towel down to protect the surroundings.



I also pushed some heat shrink tube onto the wire before I soldered the resistor on to tidy things up afterward.

Snapped everything back in place, ran the engine for a bit to let things heat up and it works great!

Dang, I had this problem too, and just now had written a whole text, almost a writeup, of my saga trying to resolve it. Pushed post button without signing in (I had cleared browser cache and forgot to sign in again). So I lost the whole post.

Here's the short version -- if you have the temp control problem and don't intend to spend countless hours in a game of trial and error regarding which resistance to use in between your HVAC control and the mix door actuator (which is where the blue/black wire goes). Do first what might save you a great deal of aggravation and check the wiring loom that connects to the heat mix door actuator. Actually start by checking the connector that plugs into the actuator first. After a couple afternoons fiddling with resistors I found out my car's problem was a bad contact between connector and actuator. Maybe some oxidation inside the connector, don't know.

But I solved it by spraying the conenctor with contact cleaner (it's a female connector so I generously sprayed all the pin holes on the connector). Then I used a larger resistor I had lying around whose "legs" were thicker and just worked one of the legs inside the pins, one at a time, taking care that the resistor leg would scrape the inside of each contact. Effectively scrubbing the connector's internal contacts. That's what solved it for me. Then I did a self calibration procedure as described here. Working like a charm now.

Also, if you don't fancy pulling your dash apart just to fit the resistor as per the service bulletin, you can look underneath your steering column towards the center of the dash where the HVAC unit is. Looking there and turning your temp dial you will see one of the little motors (the actuator) turn all the way to each side depending on which direction you turn your temp dial. Pull off the connector and you will find the blue/black wire is the middle one. You can add the resistor there. Or, do as I intended and find yourself a compatible male and female connector end fab yoursel an adaptor which will plug into the car's connector, add a resistor to the midde pin, and connect into your actuator. No taking apart dash needed.

Miker476 said:

I'd be very interested if still available!!!

Click to expand...

Hi.
In the end, the solution for me was not a new actuator (pictured), nor adding the resistor. What solved for me was cleaning the contacts on the connectors (both from the wiring loom and the car's original actuator. There was humidity inside of the connectors and around that general area. I never found out where it came from but seems to be gone (come to think of it, it's time I checked in there again to see wheter the water/humidity is gone or whether it's still coming from somewhere).

Below you'll find the photos of the adaptor I had fashioned. I made it so I could easily change resistance until I found a value that solved my issue since the 68 ohm from the bulletin did not work. (I know now why - because bad contact was my issue). I took a harness I had lying around for a Mitsubishi Montero fog light kit. The connector was a good fit (though not perfect) to the actuator motor. On the other end I soldered some electronics header pins which are also not a perfect fir to the car's harness but they worked. Then after testing and solving the issue I would connect this "male" end of my "adpator harness" to the car's harness and wrap them tightly in self-fusing electrical tape.

My suggestion is that you check your actuator connector, and the harness connector that plugs into the actuator. Clean them well by spraying contact cleaner. Use a cotton swab or a small brush on the actuator connector which has the male pins. For the car harness find a paperclip of about the same thickness as the actuator pins and straighten a part of the paperclip. Spray some contact cleaner into a female pin on the harness, and insert/remove the paperclip into the female pin a few times. Repeat this for all female pins. Then take some silicone or dielectric grease and dab a bit of it over each of the actuator's pins. Reconnect the actuator to the harness, perform an A/C calibration and check if the actuator moves a small step each time you turn the temp dial one click. It should make a small movement for each click of the dial.

If the actuator is still moving all the way with just one click, then you could make an adaptor like mine and add the 68 ohm resistor. And, if it still doesn't solve your problem then you could buy a new actuator.

After you solve the actuator operation by any of the options above, take the chance to check under your dash and around the AC/Evap/Heater core box if you have any water ingress or humidity.

It took me a few nights of trial and error, experimenting with several different resistors, replacing the actuator; to no avail, to finally find out my issue was only bad contact. So that is why I suggest you eliminate this possibility first.

And don't do like I did and forget to come back to the thread with the solution! 🤦‍♂️Once you solve it let us know here. Thanks

EDIT: It's a 5 pin connector, based on what I understood from the wiring diagrams, the resistor should go on the middle pin. Don't take my word for it, I'm not a wiring/electronics expert so it's best to recheck this but I "think" I got it right. As you can see from the photos, first I had soldered a resistor, then later when that didn't solve the issue I added a couple screw terminals to do some trial and error with different resistance values. But the basic idea of the "adaptor" is this (sorry for the rough sketch):

Question- does this 68 ohm resistor issue affect a certain year, like ‘06‘s (could’ve sworn this was the case)? Or are all kappas susceptible?

I now have the dreaded “one-click of the temp knob brings hot lava from the vents” issue.

Problem started with no heat whatsoever, but a relearn brought about the heat with the one-click problem.

Things I’ve tried-

• Relearn
• Replace the temp actuator
• Replace the H3 wiring harness hat burns out
• Replace the resistor that the red connector connects to (green piece that lives inside the blower)

Only thing I have left to try is the Ohm resistor installation.

Oh! And possibly cleaning the actuator connector like Agent008 mentioned above...

Thoughts?