any Ford Explorer experts on here?

Sounds like you have the right diagnosis to me..and the right options. I wouldnt be afraid to cut in there to save some dissassembly but either way it is an upside down standing on your head type of job. But I say go for it.. a couple hundred thousand shouldnt be an issue unless you plan to pay for all your small maintance issues between here and there. The fun with an older car is taking it apart without the worry of destroying a 30k piece of equipment.

I would check the blend door actuator first. remove the act. and turn door by hand. If movement is smooth, the actuator is bad. Open act... the gear in side is plastic. It is designed to fail before the door. If you do in fact need to replace act, you will need to "reprogram" the new act. to learn new limits.   

2003 may be the same as 2002

http://redhouseon7th.com/redhouse/howto/2003FordExplorerBlendDoor/

hope this helps,
Shawn

Well, My parents recently bought an 02 4.6 v8 explorer with 100k on it. XLT, and it has manual HVAC and not climate control like the one you have , well it sounds like it has Climate Control.

They have not had any issues, and bought it from a friend that bought it new.

Now, I have not seen that issue in explorers myself, but having fixed the blend doors on the parents other SUV which is a 99 grand cherokee ltd with the dual zone HVAC, it is a bit of work, mostly pidly screws and dash removal.

If it's anything like the blend door fix for a jeep grand (99-04) it is not tough, but takes a good few hours. The first time the jeeps blend door went under warranty, the labor is what made it costly. It was like 8 hours at 70 dollars or so shop rate. That even included discharging the refrigerant, and pulling everything on the dash. the bill would have been somewhere north of 1400 dollars.

When I fixed it, I bought an ebay fix and that solved it for a lot less work and only a hundred dollars or so. The DIY type fixes like this work great, actually better than factory usually because the factory needs to make parts for pennies, not dollars.

At least you have heat, as when it went (both times the blend doors failed and once again when the blend door actuator went out) on the grand cherokee, they had cold air pouring in and no way to stay warm. Of course all 3 times this happened in the winter.

btw, good luck

Swatkinz wrote: horkn wrote: Well, My parents recently bought an 02 4.6 v8 explorer with 100k on it. XLT, and it has manual HVAC and not climate control like the one you have , well it sounds like it has Climate Control. They have not had any issues, and bought it from a friend that bought it new. Now, I have not seen that issue in explorers myself, but having fixed the blend doors on the parents other SUV which is a 99 grand cherokee ltd with the dual zone HVAC, it is a bit of work, mostly pidly screws and dash removal. If it's anything like the blend door fix for a jeep grand (99-04) it is not tough, but takes a good few hours. The first time the jeeps blend door went under warranty, the labor is what made it costly. It was like 8 hours at 70 dollars or so shop rate. That even included discharging the refrigerant, and pulling everything on the dash. the bill would have been somewhere north of 1400 dollars. When I fixed it, I bought an ebay fix and that solved it for a lot less work and only a hundred dollars or so. The DIY type fixes like this work great, actually better than factory usually because the factory needs to make parts for pennies, not dollars. At least you have heat, as when it went (both times the blend doors failed and once again when the blend door actuator went out) on the grand cherokee, they had cold air pouring in and no way to stay warm. Of course all 3 times this happened in the winter.

Mine doesn't have climate control. confusing the way I posted it originally.

Has the explorer your parents purchased had transmission problems yet?

fwiw, also recently did a 4.0, 99, exploder trans...now i know why they call them exploders....I actually had to get a good used trans because this one was unrebuildable 55r5e, I believe

horkn wrote: Ah,   so no climate control, but rather the manual knobs. They all still have blend doors and some sort of an actuator. On the jeeps with the dual zone, the actuators are electric and had too high of torque.    Otherwise they have to use some sort of method to move the blend doors. Nope, no tranny problems, and I doubt they will.    That's a good tranny in those.

Really!, mine went out at 88k miles. I was underthe impression that this was fairly known, common problem with that tranny. Bus me that there's no way to check the trans fluid. No dipstick