2010 Journey heat issue question

[Ken2010]

Hi  My 2010 Journey is blowing warm air on the driver side and cold on passenger side   I checked the blend door actuator and I can see it move when tempature is changed. I felt the heater hoses and both are warm so the heater core is not plugged.  I am thinking that either the blend door actuator is not actually moving anything when activated or possibly the temperature controller switch is not working.  How does the heat get regulated when you change from 22 to 25 degrees Celsius?  Is it computer controlled somewhere or is it the actuator movement?  The actuator when turned on seems to move to full open no matter what it is set to.    

Note: the actuator I am looking at is on the left side of the glove box in the back. Seem like it would be difficult to take out.

 

Any my information on the temperature control would be appreciated  

Thanks

[probak118]

I had same issue, warm air on drivers side cold on passenger side; even front windshield defrost was that way ?  My temperature adjustments ( drivers and passenger ) controls are just colour ranges not actual temperature readouts. My temperature actuator arm seemed to move in increments as a would hit the red up arrows or blue down arrows. the actuator did not move automatically from one extreme to the other.

As you said left of glove box. The other two actuators,   far left changed the modes ( defrost / floor / dash ...etc) and right of glove box was the recirculation actuator. All mine worked as I would have hoped, I then fully closed the driver side (2) panel vent doors and more heat came from the passenger side two vents. I then opened both driver side panel vents , just opened from the lock closed positions, slightly opened.  Now, all (4) vents are blowing warm air and vents are blowing what seems like equal volumes of air . Who knows why, having these differences in settings from driver to passenger sides does the trick but in my case it solved the issue ? Give it a try, who knows, what can it hurt?

[Ken2010]

Hi. Interesting. I will give it a try. 
thanks

[probak118]

Ken 2010,

 

I also removed the actuator motor & arm from the bend door connection and tested. Verifying manually that the door physically moves freely all the wat in both directions and closes / opens fully.  The actuator as mentioned by someone here, re-calibrated itself,  might want to try that too ? 

[rob3921]

I have a 2010 Journey SXT with the 3.5 and this was my experience with this problem. I spent week's on forums and online trying to figure out what was going on and everyone kept saying heater core. There was no way in hell i was going to pay over 1k to have the core changed at a shop. I ordered a heater core from Rockauto and changed it myself ($80.00 with shipping). Now.... Was i going to take the dash out for a simple 5 minute swap out? NO. I cut the lines and attached them with heater hose and clamps. Prior to this i drained the old coolant and flushed the complete system as best as i could them attached the new core and added new coolant. Problem solved. NO. Hot air on the drivers side cold air on the passanger side. What the heck. Looked at the blend door actuators and all seemed to be working fine but i pulled the passenger side actuator off to inspect. Opened it up and found teeth missing from one of the gears. Ordered a new one of amazon ($23.00) and installed. Keep the old one because you may need to change the connection gear on the new actuator from the old one. Installed and...... Man still no heat on the passenger side. Removed drivers side acuators to inspect and all were good. Maybe the a temp control modual on the dash? Nope. Works fine. Need more time to figure it out. A few months passed, its starting to get cold and im starting to lose all heat. Inspected and discover my coolant tank is leaking. Maybe that was the problem all along. Not enough pressure building up. Ordered a new tank and thermostat from Rockauto ($60.00) and installed. Finally didn't have to worry about no heat on passenger side because now i have no heat period. At this point im ready to use a sledgehammer on this POS. Go through the entire system again to see if i missed something but everything checked out to be in proper working order. Now, i dont know what to do or what my next move is. While the drivers side lower panel was off, i looked at the heater core again and took a long shot at trying something. I grabbed my prybar and used the handle to lightly tap the bottom outlet tube. I did this while the vehicle was running and i noticed it kept getting hotter and hotter and on both drivers and passenger side. Lightly tapped it for a few more minutes, turned the vehicle off untill the next day. Started it and let it get hot. No problem what so ever. Heat is just blasting out of the vents on both sides. Long story short. Most likely if you have heat on only one side or no heat and you have changed parts, you will probably end up with a air pocket in the system. Bleed the system as best as you can. In total, i spent a few hours and around $250 to do the work and i actually have to turn the heat down now while driving. 

[John/Horace]

Welcome to forum, Sounds like a design flaw, nice you figured it out. This problem has come a lot of times of this forum. With the newer glycols being used now;  plugged cooling systems are pretty rare now I think.
The Chrysler orange fluid looked like new when I changed it during a pump/thermostat housing change (turned out to be bad pump gasket, not pump bearing) at 150k Kms. I assume ph and additives are probably not right so new stuff was used. There was no signs of scale or deposits anywhere in system. Mixing wrong glycols….can make a mess though.