Yes, that's right. My jdm climate control is working. Now who wants to touch me?
well, after 2 days of working on this I am almost done! first off, a few warnings. 1. this is going to be a long writeup. 2. if your stock climate control is working fine, I suggest you NOT do this. I just spent almost 2 full days working on this and I'm still not done. taking the dashboard out is scary and it's a total pain in the ass.
Anyway, I've had the parts for this for a couple months but finally found some time to work on it. The main task I needed to acomplish this weekend was mounting the airmix control motor. This is how I did it:
Dissasembly:
What we need to do is remove the heater box. a helms manual is most helpful for doing this but i'm going to give a quick summary.
under the hood
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1. remove negative battery terminal
2. drain coolant from radiator
3. remove intake pipe to get access to the heater hoses (they are on the engine side of the firewall, right about in the middle of the car.
4. remove the heater valve cable and housing from it's clip (the cable runs through the firewall from the heater core, and is right next to the 2 heater hoses that run through the firewall as well.)
5. now remove the 2 heater hoses. I had way too much trouble getting them off so I finally just cut them with a utility knife and bought some replacement hose at pep boys. when you take them off, some coolant will run out so be careful.
6. remove the 2 nuts holding the heater to the firewall
Inside the cabin
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1. remove center console, front console, head unit bracket, climate control, glove compartment, all plastic and metal covers surrounding the steering wheel.
2. remove the 2 large nuts and 2 large bolts holding the steering rack, and lower the rack.
3. disconnect all connectors attached to the dashboard, and the 6 bolts attaching it to the frame (2 on each end, 2 at bottom of front console)
4. remove the DASH!
5. at this point you should be ****ting your pants, realizing your car is now in about 200 pieces.
6. once the dash is out, remove the evaporator. there is a bolt and a nut holding it to the reciever line under the hood, and about 5 screws holding it to the firewall.
7. finally, remove the 2 screws holding the heater box and remove the heater.
Take your heater and compare it to the jdm unit.
as you can see, the jdm version is a mirror image of ours, almost. (RHD) in this picture the jdm one is on the right and I've already removed the airmix control motor.
here's a closeup of that motor:
you can see an aluminum cased sensor with an orange wire attached, on the jdm version this sensor is mounted on the heater core, but on the usdm version there is no mount for this. I decided to ignore this sensor for the time being because I couldn't find it in any of the jdm wiring diagrams.
What we need to do now is find a way to mount that airmix control motor to our usdm heater box, so that it performs the same function as our manual cable setup - controlling the mix of hot and cold air that enters the cabin. in my picture of the 2 heater boxes above, the cable attached to the usdm box on the left is what controls the heater valve in the engine bay. there is a separate cable which attaches to the lower right of the box in that picture, and that is the cable which connects to our climate control unit on the dash.
another issue is the fact that the jdm version uses a different heater valve in the engine bay which is not operated by a cable from the heater box. I decided to just use my stock heater valve and rig up the motor so that it would operate that cable as well. if you're really adventurous and have the parts, you could try to modify that as well I guess.
in this picture I've placed the motor in the approximate location that I want it. I also removed the air deflector which was mounted on the left side of the picture to give me more room to work with. (it deflects air down to the floor, so right now we are looking at the bottom of the heater)
we need to find a way to attach this bracket on the motor to the following bracket on the heater: (note: I took these pics after I had drilled a few holes already)
in the above picture, the white swivel on the left is what pulls and pushes the heater valve (remember inside the engine bay) and the metal bracket attaches to 3 other swivels to turn air dams. I figured if I could make the motor turn that main metal bracket back and forth then everything would be turning correctly, just like it did when I used the manual cable to turn it.
after a bunch of trial and error, I figured out that I had to drill a couple holes in the metal, reshape it, and use screws and plastic poles to secure the motor to the box. It's a kind of hard to explain the steps I took, since I kept having to try things and then change it when it didn't look like it would work. the first thing I needed to do was relocate the hole on the jdm bracket for it's motor spindle. I also had to reshape the jdm bracket because it was getting in the way of a little metal hanger that operated one of the levers. here's what the bracket looked like after I had my way with it - you can see the old spindle hole which is now on a bend in the metal . I've also already attached it to the metal bracket on my heater box that operates the levers.
I removed a rivet on the heater bracket and enlarged the hole, (the one on the right side in the above picture), so that I could place the jdm rivet through that hole and give the joint stability, while still operating the plastic lever. (is any of this making sense)
well, here's what my motor looked like when I mounted it on the heater box:
at this point, you might want to mount the sunlight sensor if you have it. I put mine on the passenger side right near the edge of the dash and made sure I had plenty of wire to reach to the console:
Now I'm ready to run some wires for the motor and test it out, so I need to put the heater box back in place, as well as the dash. it probably will be easier to have someone help with the dash, but I handled it fine by myself.
once those are back in place, make the following connections:
RED/YEL(4) on jdm 16p connector -> RED/YEL(3) on motor harness
GRY(7) on jdm 20p connector -> GRY(2) on motor harness
PNK/BLK(8) on jdm 20p -> PNK/BLK(5) on motor harness
RED/WHT(12) on jdm 16p -> RED/WHT(1) on motor harness
LT GRN/RED(17) on jdm 20p -> LT GRN/RED(6) on motor harness
make sure all the dash connectors are reconnected, hook up the jdm control unit, and reconnect the battery. don't put anything else back in yet, we need to test the unit and make sure it works right. (you should actually do the wiring and test the motor by itself before you start any of this, by the way). On my first test run, the motor worked great between full cold and 50% hot. the problem was my jdm motor bracket getting in the way of a lever rod. so, i had to remove the motor and reshape the bracket again. depending on how you mounted the motor, you might have to take the dash and heater out again to remove the motor, but luckily I didn't have to (although it made it very difficult with so little space). anyway, on my next try it worked great, so I went ahead and started putting some stuff back together. I also replaced my blower resistor, which is mounted on the blower, with a power transistor from a 97 acura cl. the transistor is a direct swap with the resistor, only the connectors are different. here's a picture of the cl transistor:
the wiring for this transistor is explained in Forbidden's writeup.
I haven't yet hooked up all of the sensors, but in the next few days I'll be adding that to my writeup. As of right now I have the airmix control working 100% functional, but I'm still having problems with my blower. I can only get 2 speeds, 0 and 4. I'll need to do some troubleshooting to fix that, but for now I'm just happy that the airmix works. And I'm assuming that once I hook up the sensors and get the blower working correctly, the AUTO function should work!
wow, one of the most impressive documentations i've seen.. especially on something so "unknown" great job man, thanks for putting in the time heh.. FAQ this.
thanks for the compliments! I figured this was the hardest part of the jdm climate control mod and since it was such a mystery I ought to explain as best I could. you really have to commit yourself to it once you start, especially once you start taking your dash out..
I think we should wait before FAQing it. . .maybe find a way to combine this with the other thread about the CC install. . .I dont think you can add to a thread once it has been FAQ'd, right?
Anywho. . .awsome job! I expect the prices on ebay for CC parts will go back up a little now.
damn this is all good now what everyone is doing this...when the winter comes i am going to start this little project myself...hopefully by then everyone will know how to do it and i will have no problem with it
to answer some of your questions, I did all of the work myself, but I got most of the information for doing it from Forbidden. I paid about $150 for the heater box, control unit and sun sensor, plus another $50 or so for the other sensors and power transistor from a 97 acura cl at the junkyard. I'll be happy to give anyone advice that wants to try this, but to tell you the truth I really dont' want to do it again. Anyway, I took some more pics today with the control unit in, and I managed to shoot a little video of the motor working (my digicam has a makeshift mpg recorder). here ya go:
once again, nice work! 
