Centre vent front

[chrisn7]

The temperature wheel on my vent won't hold on the blue 3 spot position, but flicks back to the blue 2 spot. The TIS shows a special tool should inserted into a small flat hole visible at the bottom of each half of the vent. Can anyone advise on the vent without the special tool please?

[steve1986]

Mine is the same,

so is my old e32 740i it stays if you hold it but bounces back once letting go.

Interested if you find a fix

Thanks

[chrisn7]

Unfortunately, there is not a fix. Eventually, I found that if you look at the bottom of the centre vent there are 2 small holes, that you have pass to a tool through to release 2 plastic barbs. The vent then releases, but doesn't reveal a solution, except that you can see one end of a blue Bowden cable, so I followed this to its other end. This is under the drivers lower dash. The cable appears to operate a flap within the heater, which its does via plastic plate screwed to the end of the flap. This plate is ridged to allow clamping in quite a wide range of positions, none of which allows the vent wheel to travel fully to both extremes. It really needs a shorter inner cable, as this is too long for the range of movement available - not really what you expect from BMW

[Smeeagain]

anyone know where I can get the tool to remove the front vent?

Smee

[chrisn7]

You can do it with something like a small screwdriver with its end bent over to 90 degrees by about 15 mm. The trick is to insert the bent end through the hole so its roughly horizontal, then twist the end up to raise the retaining plastic barb. you'll need to insert a second small flat screwdriver under that barb, while you release the second one the same way.

[Smeeagain]

And then just push them back in place with a snap fit?

[Ryoken]

mines just started doing this,  i got full movement on hot , but ive lost 1 to 2 or is it 2 to 3 on the cold side.
is it the cable or the actual vents fault?

[chrisn7]

Sorry for the delay: Its the Bowden cable - the inner cable is too long, so that however you adjust the cable, turning the wheel will reach the limit of available cable movement before the wheel reaches its own maximum movement, whether at the hot or cold end.

[Ryoken]

but how do you change the damn thing

[Slick]

You jack up the wiper blades and slide an exchange vehicle under them  ::)

[chrisn7]

[quote="Ryoken"]
but how do you change the damn thing
[/quote]
It isn't that the cable needs changing, it needs shortening -that's the difficult part. I'll be having another look at this