Any ideas on how to remove "idiot proofing" in my van's climate control?

[MrPlow]

It is the three dials with the centers as push buttons. When the temp is turned to lowest dial setting, it turns on max AC which is AC plus recirc.
Yeah, it is probably not a simple hack-around. Someday.... someday...

That entire climate control is one unit, from what I can gather online. Maybe find a used one from a wrecker and mess around with taking it apart to see if there is some physical piece that can be altered or removed. Heck, it might even be possible to do this by just pulling the knob off and seeing if there is an extra electrical contact at that point in the rotation.

I would be a bit more cautious with doing this type of mod on newer cars with such integrated wiring systems. I got lucky that Toyota made my idiot-proofing idiot proof for idiots like me who want to tinker with idiot-proofing. It's like idiot inception over here. LOL

 

[PimTac]

My Mazda has a sunlight sensor and a temperature sensor. Fooling around with the controls could get one into a big mess. Check if yours has these.

 

[Number_35]

Our '97 Mazda van had a slider control for recirculation. When it was extremely cold out, setting the slider about halfway was a good compromise - there was enough fresh dry air coming in that the windows wouldn't fog up, but not so much as to overwhelm the heater.

Our '01 Protege had moved to a binary system (full recirc or full fresh air) which did not allow that blend. Furthermore, when defrost was selected, the recirc was automatically switched to fresh.