V68 flap motor... oh please give me strength!

[jimbof]

So I can hear the tell-tale ticking but not from the previous place... hook up VCDS and I can see that V68 temperature control flap is doing the merry dance of uncertainty...

Thanks VW, you have this engineering a car to 100,000 miles down to a fine art... at this you really excel.

 

Anyone got any tips for changing V68?

Cheers...!

Edited 21 November, 2013 by jimbof

[jimbof]

Found this brief guide, motor on order. 

http://www.ukpassats.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=46881

[jimbof]

So I finally got round to doing this tonight.  The V68 has been playing up for a long time - re-adapting using VCDS would usually fix it for a couple of weeks and then it would go again.  Symptom being the car gets hotter and hotter inside...

 

Wasn't so bad when my water temp was only 75'C due to a failing thermostat; but having fixed the thermostat and my water being at a rock solid 94'C it has got a bit "tropical" in the cabin!

 

Factory manuals say dash out and a helper to raise the heater box; what a bunch of big girl's blouses.  Perfectly doable with just the glovebox out (if you're not a knuckle-dragging luddite).

 

So my tips:

1. Get the glovebox out.
2. V68 is the motor with the red hub which you can just see above the gearbox tunnel if you crouch down in the passenger footwell.  Get a good light in there to illuminate things.
3. Set the heater all the way down to COLD.  This allows you to access the first two 6mm bolt heads closest to you.  I use a tiny 6mm bahco ratchet, which is brilliant.
4. Set the heater all the way up to HOT.  This clears the arm from the 6mm bolt head furthest from you.  A little pressure on the footwell vent will give you a bit more room.
5. Set the heater back to COLD.  This moves the arm into the easiest position to free the hub from the arm.  Disconnect the plug from the back of the motor (press the two clips in on the short sides of the connector and pull it off).  Rotate the motor out towards you from the connector end, while holding the arm - this should rotate the hub locking peg in the arm until it reaches the cutouts to get the motor hub out of the arm.  Have a look with a torch and you'll see how far you need to turn it to get it out of the cutouts.
6. You might want to test the new motor at this point before putting it all back together.
7. Rotate the new motor back in the same way.  Do up the two closest bolts, then set to HOT, and do up the furthest bolt.  I stuck a little bit of blutack into the ratchet to prevent the bolts falling out as you're working upside down in cramped conditions.
8. Glovebox back.

All told took a little more than an hour to fix.  Fiddly but very do-able.

[jimbof]

For what it is worth; I can see why the factory book thinks you have to get the dash out and raise the heaterbox; it says the 3 self tapper screws are T15, which would be impossible to access if it were true.  I guess at some point someone realised that 6mm bolt heads would be much easier, and forgot to update the documentation.

[pinstripe]

@jimbof: do you believe that in my case: after cold start is soon starts to blow very hot air - if i set the ECON mode to 22 c  it blows at least 28 or more. - if i put it down to LO  i get the somewhere normal temp. After some time it comes back to normal 22 is then 22.

would this be a symptom of poor V68?

 

anyway. thanks for a good write-up

Edited 14 March, 2016 by pinstripe

[jimbof]

Mine behaved quite similarly - it would come on hot, you could make it tollerable by turning the temperature all the way to low.  If you turned it back up to 22' it became pot luck whether it would stick at 22' or gradually get hotter and hotter.

 

If you have VCDS then the faulty motors confess all; there is also a manual procedure which will give you a fault code via the display on the Climatronic unit.

I haven't tried it as I have VCDS, but there is a guide here:

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~jues/Climatronic_Self_Diagnostics.pdf

[pinstripe]

do you believe V68 can be fixed or better to replace?

 

thanks for this - will report back on this in few days

 

..just run the VCDS - no faults ...???

Edited 14 March, 2016 by pinstripe

[jimbof]

I haven't taken apart my old V68, but if I recall when I took apart one of the others from the car the plastic gears were quite worn inside.  So probably not really worth trying to strip and fix.

 

You might find if you wiggle the red hub of the motor a bit (you can touch it without removing the glovebox) that it helps for a while.  Also if you have VCDS you can re-run the adaptation range which attempts to re-home the motors.  That works for a while, though progressively less and less each time.

 

I bought a replacement part from an ebay Audi breakers which cost me £10.  A bit of a gamble, but it seems to work well.  I did the same thing with the footwell / demister motor (yellow top), and that has lasted around 60K so far.

 

These motors are used in many cars VAG cars.  For what it is worth, both my failed motors have been "Made in Spain" units, and the replacements I've fitted have come out of Audis and been "Made in Malaysia".  Don't know if there is anything in that of significance.

 

8D2 820 511 D is the part number of the red-top unit.

Edited 14 March, 2016 by jimbof

[numskull]

Fantastic, helpful thread. Many thanks guys....

[jimbof]

A few piccies. You can see in the second and third the wear of the gears which makes them a very sloppy fit that often appears to slip. Replacement is the only option I think; however the large gear looks like it could be possible to rotate 180 degrees to use an unworn section of gear (only around 45 degrees is used); the small gear has wear across 3 or 4 of it's teeth.

Edited 14 March, 2016 by jimbof

[jimbof]

..just run the VCDS - no faults ...???

In my experience they don't log permanent faults until they are really quite broken.

 

If yours isn't that broken yet you could try doing Basic Settings -> Group 0 -> Go!, which will re-range the motors

The other thing you can do is look at the flap motor desired and actual values while adjusting.  if you see them hunting a lot either side then it is a sign the gears have a lot of play in them and they keep over / undershooting.

[pinstripe]

thank you on all the details

i'll try first with VCDS and Climatronic to be 100% sure it is the V68

only then ill dig in if necessary...

will report back!

[Tom_vRS]

Interesting, thanks.

Do you think there is enough room to remove the T15 screws with mole grips or similar, if you were unlucky of course?

[jimbof]

All the Passat posts I've seen refer to 6mm too, so perhaps it was only on early cars, or some other variant and the service guide has a copy and paste error in it.

There isn't much room at all in there and the furthest one is quite far in - around 7cm or so.

Edited 15 March, 2016 by jimbof

[rum4mo]

When I had my old 2001MY Passat 4Motion, I bought a temperature motor, but just left it in the boot until I found a "how to change it" on one of these forums - this I found after having to stop on a journey and get out of the car to cool down a bit!  I found this job very do-able, more than what can be said for the recirculate motor assembly.

 

I think that what happens to all these motors is that the positional feedback potentiometer wiper or track gets "dirty" - that is what causes the hunting (tick-tock) - unless you can take that assembly apart and clean it, you are wasting your time using a used flapmotor, demanding Cold<>Hot quite a few times can clean the wiper/track surface up enough for it to work for a few days/weeks/months - but in the end it is faulty and will cause grief!  Too hot in winter acceptable, too hot in summer no good!