No air flow through dash vents

[tdokmo]

On my 2002 X5 3.0L I am having intermittent issues where I get no flow through the center dash vents. You can hear the fan motor working, but no flow through the vents at all, then randomly air will begin to flow from the vents, and then go away shortly there after. The car has already had the IHK and final stage units replaced. Any advice is appreciated.

[Tomaz]

I'm guessing the actuator: http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...35&hg=64&fg=45 is mechanically failing or the signal to it is faulty. Good luck

[tdokmo]

Is there any way to test these actuators to narrow down which one is defective??

[UncleBob]

Originally Posted by tdokmo

Anyone have a DIY for testing or replacing the actuators?

a while back i had a problem with the HVAC control panel dying and when it did, everything just stopped working. the dealer's solution was easy, replace it. but it costs $700 and i wasn't so sure that it was the problem. i swapped it with a known working one and the problem still existed so it wasn't the unit itself.
so i thought one of the actuators was bad and tried to isolate it. i unplugged all of them and re-connected them one by one to see which caused the fault.
well, after re-connecting all of them the problem disappeared!!! and it has been over 6 months now without one failure when it used to happen non-stop.
so i don't know what i did but disconnecting them worked.

the bentley service manual was indispensable in this case and paid for itself many times over.