Hello everybody! Good day to you and welcome back! Glad you guys are here. This is a I think it's a 2004 Ford E350 cargo van. It's got the high top on it. It's got the high top on it for extra clearances.

Uh, it's an AC Service Van uh. Customer states that while driving under load, the AC system does not blow properly. So uh, we're going to see why the AC is not working on this unit. uh.

Customer also states that after a like a lengthy cool cool down period. so let's say you go to drive it, then you shut it off and come back to restart. It's got a long cranking condition so we're going to look into that as well. So uh, let's get, uh, tell you what, we'll get this thing out on the road, we'll go drive it some and I'm going to feel around at the vents and make sure the air is blowing where it's supposed to be and we'll see what LS this particular uh Ford uh E350 at on the odometer.

Let's go ahead and get started here, see what's going on with this thing. So what we need to do? go ahead and crank up the vent and I'm going to operate this through uh through all the vent features. So we're going to go over here to defrost I Heard the doors actuate. Uh, one thing to note about these uh, these Ford doors is the AC blend Door system.

Inside of this unit is vacuum operated. It pulls engine vacuum from the intake manifold which is under here, pulls engine vacuum from the manifold and then runs that into the dash through the firewall and then that goes to a vacuum splitting manifold and that manifold sends uh vacuum to each one of the door actuators. and that's how the doors are uh, are operated. so let's switch it to mix.

That should give us uh, face vents here and floor vents. I'm not feeling much going on with that. Nope. I Feel no air? Yeah, a little bit up top.

Still okay, let's go straight to floor. not really feeling floor vents in this unit like I feel kind of a draft over here, but I'm not really certain. Okay, let's go. Max AC Yeah I Barely have there.

we go now. we have some front vent action. You guys hear it. Okay yeah, the doors that are inside of this Dash those are all spring-loaded and they do have a default position and so if you lose the vacuum Supply coming into the dash, they will revert back to their default position and often times that goes straight to the floor or straight to defrost.

So let's get this thing out on the road. I Think what we'll do is we'll do like a a heavy throttle pull up and over the bridge that should provide an adequate loss in engine vacuum to the AC manifold to cause the doors to go into their default position. So let's get out out of here and uh, see what this thing's going to do. We'll try a moderate throttle Pole right here.

feeling the vents, feeling the vents. That's a negative. Okay, so I made a video earlier talking about the uh, augmented reality glasses the VR stuff and there's a lot of people that support the idea that virtual reality is like going to be the near future. But I'd like to know how a A Google headset bolted to my head is going to explain to me how how to figure out uh, what's going with the with the AC system I'd love to find that out.

I'm not a supporter of AI replacing, uh, the human factor when it comes to troubleshooting and that was my point in that what some folks were calling a rant video I was just talking about it, but apparently I was ranting and I'm nervous that AI is going to leave me jobless which I don't believe. Anyway, we're in, the throttle vents are venting. Let me switch this over here to defrost and I do feel some defrost here. more throttle.

Okay, defrost went away I Got in this almost a wide open throttle condition in the defrost vence. Swit So that tells me that there's probably a loss of vacuum. uh, at these vents. Somewhere it could be at the manifold down below.

It could be the supply line on top of the engine. Could be a lot of things. We're going to bring this into the shop, take a look around, see if I can't see what's going on visually and if, uh, if I can't identify at that point we'll have to plug the smoke machine into it and look for it that way. So stay tuned.

This is going to be a very good video. All righty back at the shop. Uh, one thing to note that the AC on this truck is very cold. which I suppose we should expect that from an air conditioning service vehicle you got to have cold AC am I going to clear the roof? Yeah, yeah, we're good here.

Hold on and I'm just going to nose it in right here in the middle stall. It's a good space for testing and things of that nature. Here we go, that's good parking. the outo let good it.

How do I get out of here? There we go. windows down ever so slightly, roll them down and of course we must Po in the hood. All right coming around the front here. uhoh something's dangling.

What is this H dos it's a hood prop. Maybe can't find my my button Bad start there it is found, it put up and yeah I think this is the 54, the infamous 54 Triton I think that's what we have in here. Okay, okie, do so. there's our vacuum check valve and someone's already done the reroute to this.

uh, these check valves these vacuum lines were supposed to run into. Uh I think the HVAC box and and then they had a vacuum Reservoir inside of them and it looks like this one has already had the reroute mod done. Where what happens is when that vacuum uh Reservoir fails, it leaps and you've got to take the uh, entire HVAC assembly out in order to replace it. Well, rather than doing that, what folks will do is they'll run a new vacuum line through the fender well into the cabin and then connect to the manifolds.

That way, you don't have to make this like a 9 or 10 hour job. It just turns into like a 2 or 3 hour job. So let's see in the door jam here. Yeah, there's the vacuum line coming in.

See right? Not this one. But it's right there. right back behind it that's going to come into our footwell area. there's the vacuum line.

Where does it come through? That's what I want to see right there. I see it right there moving around. Okay, okay A little bit of light on the subject. So I'm thinking I believe this right? Here is the correct line line, right? Yep, that one's wiggling.

So here's our line. Let me pull this, uh, little knee bolster back here a little bit. we can get a get a better view of what we're trying to see. Get Rid Of You! Okay, so there's our line coming in and that guy is running straight up to a little block manifold that, uh, distributes vacuum.

Um, I Don't see a Reservoir in here. We're supposed to have a vacuum. Reservoir Yeah, that's actually kind of critical. Yeah, here's one of the actuators.

real quick. See? Uh. We got a vacuum line coming into it. This white line.

when vacuum's applied to this, it's going to pull that lever down and it'll operate the door. Let me reach up. I'm going to reach up real quick and we're going to grab that nozzle or that handle here and see if we can't watch that. Uh, watch that actuator in action.

Just flipped it. Oh, that was fast. Yeah, that was super fast here. There we go.

See that thing go. So it's got a default in one position and then when vacuum's applied, it goes to the uh, the next position. So watch this. So here's what we'll do.

We've got the uh thing open. I'll go ahead and disconnect vacuum this and it closes immediately. There's our vacuum right here. Hear it? But we are supposed to have a reservoir to hold a little bit of extra vacuum.

Um I Think what I'm going to do is get a gauge out and we're going to probe this system a couple times and just make sure there's no leak somewhere. and then uh, I'll probably order and install a reservoir to prevent this uh scenario from continuing. Yeah, Back on the hood, doing a quick double check, following the line down. I do not see any kind of canister or Reservoir here.

so let's check this system out real quick. I Want to check the check valve first we can do that. Okay, so what I've got here is a vacuum pump. Basically just a little hand operated pump, got a line on the end of it and a nozzle.

What I'll do is plug the nozzle. We'll self test the the pump not bleeding down. it does hold vacuum. There we go.

So what I want to do here is kind of probe this system a little bit. We'll check the source and the check valve. Come here. come off of there please.

There we go here. There's our gauge. We've got decent engine vacuum going right here. Uh, to illustrate what happens when you apply throttle and open the throttle plates.

What I'm going to do is go rev this up some and we should see this vacuum Gates fall ever so slightly where it could actually fall closer to zero if I manag to run out of vacuum. Uh, it's going to get a little loud because I do have to rev the engine. but I just want to illustrate how this, uh, how that system is going to function. You guys see that as soon as the throttle plates open up to wide open throttle, there's no restriction in the intake stream and so there is no vacuum being pulled by the Pistons inside of the engine.

Okay, so now that we know there's a good source for the vacuum here. I Disconnected disconnected the tool. We'll plug our check valve back in. We can connect it on the other side of the check valve and then make sure the check valve is working.

Let's try it like this: No. I need an adapter to bring this down a size. Here we go plug that in, check our gauge here when we plug this unit up and there's our vacuum again. I'm going to give this one more rev test just to make sure it's all functioning and then we'll check the check valve.

Okay, so did we see how the gauge did not fall to zero when I went wide open throttle at the accelerator pedal? That is because this check valve is a one-way valve That out here, this is a one-way valve. It's only going to let vacuum flow this direction, not this direction. So if the engine is off and there's still vacuum on the rest of the system, it can't pull air from the engine intake manifold. so it's only a one-way valve.

now. the issue with that is though is: I Do not think we actually have a reservoir on this side to serve as a vacuum source for when the engine is under a higher load because at some point if you have the throttle open for an extended period of time and there is no vacuum, the vacuum, required to maintain the operation of those doors is no longer present because the feed Source has been cut off. That's the reason we have to have Reservoir in the system. but I don't think we have one So let's try to tap into the system and test it out at the manifold on the inside and uh, we can see while driving and while under load.

If we in fact do lose vacuum, uh, at the HVAC system in side of the dash, Okie do So we're back in the cabin and I have this uh Contraption rigged up right here. It's a three-way split. So the little top valve or the top line that is our uh, that's the line that goes up to the actuator manifold, the one on the right over there, that's the supply line and then I've got this clear one going over here to the vacuum gauge which is right in front of us. We're going to go ahead and take this out on the road here.

Let's give it a REV real quick. see how vacuum fell? That's what we do not want to see on the interior side of the system. so we're going to go out and drive this, put it under load and we're going to watch how vacuum Falls when throttle has been applied and is opened up. If we bring it up to RPM we about 22500 right now I get I bet we can see it still does have vacuum.

but if we get into Full Throttle while driving, there's going to be a prolonged period of no vacuum and that's what I want to look at. So let's go ahead and back this thing out. We'll take it for one more quick test drive. HKS For safety, backing out the AO All right.

Looks like we're good to roll out. Put you guys down here. You can take a look at the vacuum gauge and look at there. We're losing so much vacuum while just driving and I'm at half throttle right now just on a Surface Street and we had no vacuum at the system.

That is definitely going to cause these vents to go to their default position and then we lose. uh air. Direction Not okay. accelerating still on a Surface Street Yeah, we're down to 5 in Mercury It's not enough.

We're at idle now, the throttle is closed, and we have normal vacuum. All right. We're pulling up to the yield sign at the Brid bridge waiting for a break in traffic. We're good applying throttle and we're going to go wide open throttle here.

Yeah, look at that. We have no manifold vacuum whatsoever coming into the cabin notada zero zip zil and we have lost Center vent blowing so these vents are now closed. Yep. I Come off the throttle, vacuum is returned and my vents.

So what we lack in this uh in this system is a reservoir. All right. Back at the shop. and I have a dorant component here.

It's a part number 47 Niner Ner 5 and this is supposed to be uh, just a generic SL aftermarket uh vacuum Reservoir which is basically just an empty bottle. Now, for some reason, you guys seem to like when I do this. So I'm just going to keep doing it there. We go.

get into that unit right there. let's see what we have in store for us in the Box Oh, come here. There we go. Yep, it's an empty bottle we got one way in, one way out.

That is all. No leaks, it's mountable. Door Man Part number: What we need to do is connect this Reservoir and mount it of course to the vacuum system in side of the cabin over here. I I mean I Suppose I could do it under the hood, but like what we saw earlier, there's not really much, uh, real estate to work with.

So I'm just going to have to find a place down below to uh to stick this unit. So let me get situated real quick and we're going to try to figure out how to mount this up and connect it in line uh with the rest of that system. So first things first: I'm going to go ahead and disconnect all of my uh, my testing apparati is it apparatuses is or apparati. I'm going to connect this little manifold, disconnect this little manifold Eng Gaug assembly.

All these pieces go with my test kit. so I've got to get different pieces to splice in that uh, that? Reservoir So put those over here for now back in its package. I'll clean you up later. So over here on the bench.

I've got uh, some various I have some uh, various vacuum fittings and I believe we're going to need a tea fitting. so let's get H You know what? Let's be fancy with it. use a Y fitting I Think we should do that? Yeah, we use the Y fitting and 764 vacuum hose. 73 seconds and 316.

just try one. see what happens that's a good fit? Okay So we've got one. Let's make sure that this hose is going to fit on the reservoir and it will. Okay, so we can at least connect the reservoir to a splitter.

Now we just need to figure out how to connect this splitter in line with the uh, the intake line that's coming into the cabin. so I uh I went into the truck and I cut a little piece off the end of the line that goes up to the actuator manifold. We're just going to use this to size it so I'm not running back and forth I'm thinking this is the smallest line that I have here. see if this is going to fit over it and and that does fit.

Okay, so now all we need to do is come up with a way to connect this line to this little manifold device right here. Wonder if I have an adapter like a step down? That one fits. Does this one fit this one? and it does. kind of tight, but it does fit okay I think I can arrange this.

This is going to work. So here's how I think I'm going to do this. We're going to apply some uh lubricant to this piece of hose and shove this guy over the barbed area on this little adapter thing right here. That's tight squeeze but we're good.

Okay, that's going to work I don't need much. cut a little more than that. There we go. Now that will fit on the small line.

then these are going to fit up to the reservoir and the supply line. So let's go over to the cabin here and get this. uh, this business all set up. So we'll start with what we know and this is our vacuum supply line heading up to the manifold in the dash.

So we just need to stick this thing in. We need lubricant. We won't go in very far without Lube Here we'll take the dialectric and just kind of smear some on the tip. right here there we go.

Stick that in until it bottoms out far as it's going to go unless the hose is going to Kink You don't want to kink your hose during insertion. it could develop a leak or it may stop functioning so that's going to run up. Need to find a home for this thing now. I think I can zip tie it you I'll just zip tie it in like right about here.

that's out of the way and it's not going to interfere with anything so that can go in that location. Okay, we go. Oh you can't even see. Yeah, it's way up there.

Put it right here. I'll zip tie it on probably to there's a connector right there and then there's another like piece of a wiring harness right down here. I Can zip tie it to that so that should support this reservoir. uh, fairly easily.

That'll work. So let me pull this guy out some real quick. like figure out what we're going to do with regards to securing this zip tie. Gravity air perck, Zip tie failure I Dropped it.

Tell you what? We're going to go right around this harness right here. It's got a fairly large and Meaty uh, plastic bracket. we can zip tie it to that. Okay, that was good.

and then the bottom. We'll go around this wiring harness. Come here. There we go.

That's good, that's secure as I think it needs to be. It's not going to fall out, it's not going to hinder the passengers foot space and we have good access to all of our vacuum ports and all that good stuff. So what we need to do next is connect our little three-way unit. What? I'm going to do? Go ahead and cut this off I need bigger Cutters But I'm not going to go get them cuz I figure I can just chop through this one with these little ones.

By the time it takes me to walk over to the box to get a bigger one, it's that sunk cost fallacy. Now where's that port? I'm thinking connect this one. connect that one here. like.

so take the vacuum line here, plug that guy into the reservoir, flip it around, connect it like right about here. So I've got to got to cut this in half again. That just ruined my whole theory on saving time because now this is where I would have, uh, gained the time by getting a different tool. But since I've already committed to the idea I can't go back now because again I only have one more.

That's the reason this is a fallacy. Plug that one in right there now. I Just need to connect the supply line up top. Can you guys see what I'm doing? Nope, that's the supply line coming through the firewall.

Connect this one right here to the manifold and now this Reservoir is in line with the vacuum system. Uh I Think one more set of zip ties here to secure this a little better. I Have an idea. Watch this.

Take that back off. We'll go up and over that piece of plastic. Oh, listen to the reservoir releasing its reserves. Listen right here.

See that that should be enough at all times to maintain operation during wide open throttle. So I'll throw one more zip tie around this and I think this, uh should be sufficient. We can go out and, uh, take this thing for one more test drive and prove out that uh, the AC is not changing vent position while driving. We finished filling around these zip ties and we'll get out of here.

Bear with me folks. Bear with me. Nice. nice, nice, Nice.

Me likey. sweet, cool beans. All right, let's get out of here. Okay, one more test drive.

let's get out of here backing up honks for safety here. This thing's got all the bells and whistles on. Look at that little backup alarm. It's got, uh, aftermarket tire pressure monitoring systems.

All kinds of cool stuff in this truck. Okay, so we're back at the bridge. We're going to go wide open throttle on our incline. There's no traffic and we have air flow that is continuing to flow there.

Very good. All right. I Think this is a success you guys. We fixed the uh.

the air flow not flowing when it should be problem. Climate Control is now operating as designed. The system is functioning uh, back to a normal state of being. Uh, So that being said, I think I have no more to offer you on this particular video.

uh other then a thank you for watching this video As always. hope you guys enjoyed this video. Let me know what you think about this repair in the comment section down below. Uh, do not forget to H that like button while down there and most importantly have yourselves a fantastic day! See you guys later in a day in a video in of AC Dash Vent repair end of transmission.