2014-2020 Rogue heater blend door repair

[D60]

First, I'm not sure I'm exact on the MYs of '14-20. Also note '14 is confused by the Rogue Select which was the previous body style. If you have the older Select, I don't think this applies.

The square drive of the actuator motor is infamous on these. Over time the male portion strips or cracks the female, and you have no heat on the driver side.

Nissan kindly refuses to sell parts and their solution is an entire new HVAC box, requiring dash removal. To be fair, the design is so bad I don't know what they'd sell you -- the affected female piece would require the whole box be opened, so it would still have to come out from behind the dash. Truly, Ford's Team TTB would be impressed by the engineering blunder here.

It seems in just the past few months -- based upon video dates -- the aftermarket has stepped up. There's a guy in TX who is 3D printing a solution. He says he's been running his for a year with success. His kit cost me $63 shipped and he goes by Unique Engineered Products:
https://www.unique-engineered-products.com/

The second option of which I'm aware is a guy who is having pieces injection molded. His kit is way more pricey at $350. He goes by Renegade Solutions:
https://renegadesolutionscompany.com/products/nissan-rogue-heater-box-fix-low-torque-version

Renegade has several videos on YT including a lengthy one where he talks about the design process and trials and tribulations of prototypes, and why he finally settled on the final design. He says they went through 171k cycles in testing before the mechanical counter finally failed.

I think Renegade's solution is almost surely superior, but the cost difference is substantial.

I installed the less expensive kit from Unique Engineered Products today and so in a separate post I'll relay a few tips.

This will be an increasing problem for indys so perhaps this will help some. It's basically 100% guaranteed every one of these Rogues will experience this.

 

[D60]

The Unique Engineered Products (here in UEP) kit includes a snap ring. It's optional and the idea is that if the female portion has split and spread, the ring helps hold it together. If you watch his video this will become clear. Trust me, watch the vid if this a topic you must pursue. Little I say will make sense otherwise:


In this '19 I didn't see that the female portion had split per se. Instead, the male drive had simply "drilled out" the female. Note the plastic dust on the square drive:

and shavings which fell to a small shelf when I removed the actuator:

This is the kit in the foreground (snap ring not shown). I reco a small Titan screwdriver as shown above, it's a life saver for the actuator screw closest the firewall:

Despite not observing any splitting, I liked the idea of the snap ring so I installed it. This was a mistake as it created enough drag that the motor wouldn't return to full hot after cycling to cold. So, I reco not using the snap ring if possible.

Perhaps the best tip I can give you is that your lifeline to sanity (too late, in my case) is a visual indicator. Give yourself a dot or a line on the female portion, then cycle the door by hand and make a mental note of approx where full cold and full hot resides. Seen here is my tiny black dot and I wasted tons of time troubleshooting before getting smart enough to do this:

Another tip is that it's wise to start with the engine at operating temp. This way you can start the vehicle periodically to determine where hot and cold are (full clockwise is hot) and if your motor is cycling and producing the desired temp.

The UEP kit requires you to discard a short right angle piece of vent that directs air to your feet (remember what I said about watching the video?). Instead, it will essentially blow on your knees. Unless you maybe have Raynaud's in your feet, I'd say this is a non-issue. Still, it's a compromise of the less expensive UEP kit that the Renegade kit is not forced to make. Honestly, getting that right angle piece off is the worst part of the job and I would NOT want to put it back anyway!!

 

[D60]

Also my Xtool was able to pull a couple error codes from the HVAC module. I believe cycling the motor when it's disconnected causes these as it expects to see a "stop" at some point. The motor doesn't seem to have preset stops and instead must be working off.....amp draw....? I guess? to know where the limits are. So, it encounters enough resistance when hooked up and figures "this is full hot" or "this is full cold."

I don't think the codes preclude proper operation but if you have an upper level scan tool I'd clear them just the same.

I also watched live data of the HVAC module, which was moderately interesting. It seems to account for cabin temp (of course), ambient temp, vehicle speed, sun load (presumably through the dash photo sensor?), ECT and more.

 

[Boomer]

They should have driven this with a PTO from the CVT. Then they could have both failed together.

 

[D60]

They should have driven this with a PTO from the CVT. Then they could have both failed together.

[sigh] don't give them any ideas. Honestly I'm surprised the actuator doesn't have to be recalibrated by a dealer-level scan tool -- I mean, why not???