Heater valve cable not moving

The cable has been out for over a year now, and it was not fun last winter. The valve itself works fine and I can manually change from A/C to heat at the actual valve, but the knob won't move the cable at all. As the temperature fluctuates a lot here I'd rather not have to get out and change it each time. How do I diagnose and fix it? Any help is appreciated.

 

Any chance that you spray some WD-40 into the cable?

 

Welcome to TacomaWorld
If your truck has a round knob temperature selector it uses an electronic actuator that has a servo motor and plastic gears to move the valve on firewall.

 

Hmm, the cable has some slack when I pull on it so I'm not sure if that's it, but I'll keep that in mind, thanks.

 

Mine looks like this so I don't think it's the one you're referring to?

 

That is all servo actuated HVAC
Earlier models have sliding levers and cable HVAC controls. Yours are electric.

 

Ah ok, thank you! Any leads on how to fix/ replace it?

 

YouTube has many 1st gen Tacoma HVAC repair vids easily found using the search.

 

Thank you I appreciate the help! I didn't know where to look so this helps a lot.

 

Around 3 minutes in this video shows the cable actuator
https://youtu.be/9f2VqkdiJwo

 

You may want to read this before buying a replacement actuator.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...ssible-aftermarket-part.500522/#post-16582776

 

Go to a salvage yard and you can get the complete gears and mechanical parts 95-97

 

Did you ever find the fix for this?

 

I had this problem where my dials seemed to be stuck, there is the cable that you've identified in your engine bay and there is also a cable underneath the glove box area ( you gotta tear into it pretty far, my buddy did this for me). The way I fixed this was to spray fluid film in the sleeves of both these cables while you have someone on the HVAC controls moving them back and forth repeatedly (making sure not to spin it so far that it skips gears). After enough persuasion my controls now work pretty decently.

We also found an old wasps nest in my heater core area, not sure how those little shits got in there but I'm sure that wasn't helping with my knob movements.

 

My 99 has the exact same knob. Cable acuated. I replaced the valve and it turned just fine afterwards.

 

Thanks for the reply. Looks like mine is the same issue. Replaced the firewall valve and it didn’t change a thing. But once i started spraying some lube into the cable you mentioned, it started getting easier. Thanks homie.

 

Thanks for the insight on this topic. Question...is the blend door actuator the same part that controls the cable that is attached to the temp control valve under the hood at the firewall? I have a 2002 Sequoia that doesn't get warm air all of the sudden. I checked the valve and it rotates easily. The cable, however, doesn't move up or down. I've started spraying silicon spray, per a different thread, to see if that will help. As some on this thread have described, I'm not hearing the grinding gears when I switch the temperature control knob from cold to hot or vice versa. Thank you for the insight.