HVAC manual - Air mixer door cable loose

[SplanK]

Hi,
Whilst driving the car today, I noticed that the HVAC system was not putting out as much heat as I would have expected. Thankfully I ruled out quickly the coolant system being the issue and narrowed my search down to the control cable that links the heat control knob to the air mix door. The give away was a binding sensation with the knob itself at the half way point.

Looking underneath the dash, I could see the control cable was not firmly attached to the clamp and thus resulting in the arm not being thrown correctly.

Now, fixing this seems fairly straight forward, fully detach the cable from the clamp, adjust the control to the coldest point, and re-attach. However, Nissan do not give the position or sweep information they expect the air mix door arm to take so positioning seems a bit of a guess?!

Does anybody have any pictures or description of the full cold, and full hot position before I go and re-contort myself back into the footwell and attempt reach the dam thing (ideally, without having to remove the full dash!!)!?

At the moment, full cold for me seems to be all far left as far as it will go, more left than the image below seems to suggest. In the service manual, it seems to suggest that the position is more central for full cold, with it being pulled to the right for hot?

From the workshop manual....

 

[SplanK]

Sussed it. The control cable outer needs to sit flush-ish with the clip mount. Hot is mostly to the right as well so diagram above for cold is roughly right.

The cable continued to side in the clamp, even after squeezing the clamp both with and without the cable - there was just no grip to be had and I think the air mix door is somewhat tight as there is a decent amount of resistance - thus making the control cable slip. I did think about packing it out with something such as electrical tape but I doubt it would work. Clamp also didn't seem to want to be removed.

I spied a couple of slits in the clip so zip tie engineering at its best, I threaded 2 thin zip ties through, looped them together, used some plyers to squeeze the clamp together then did up the zip ties to maintain the pressure on the cable. Hey presto, no slippage. How long it will last I dont know but I have left the ends uncut on the zip tie so I can re-torque them later. Will leave the dash in bits for a week or 2 to keep an eye on it, hopefully it see's out the rest of the cars life!

My access was remove the bottom part of the centre dash, remove the head unit cowl and head unit itself which gained somewhat tight access from both top and bottom - but just enough to do the job, otherwise it would seem its dash out job!

Not the best image, but might help somebody else in the future! This was from bottom looking up.