My 2007 XC70 started blowing HOT air out the vents on the drivers side a couple days ago. Passenger side seems to be fine. Hooked up my DiCE box with Vida, and it looks like the damper motor that handles air distribution in not working. Before I take the car to the stealership, I am going to look into sourcing a damper motor from the local U-Pull It yard. Question is, will the "new" motor need to be paired with the CCM by the stealership? Vida was not totally clear on this. I saw similar working in Vida a while ago when the Steering Angle Sensor (SAS) failed, and when I installed a new one, everything worked fine.

Also, when poking around with the DiCE box and Vida, I noticed the drivers seat heater was not responding when turned on. The passenger seat heater showed up on Vida as being on when I turned it on. So, I am wondering about a possible connection between the seat heater and the damper motor since they are both controlled by the CCM.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

--
Gary D

Thanks all for your assistance. It looks like I have the problem resolved.

After looking at a few different forums and information on the climate control system, I began to suspect there was something amiss on the LINBus, which controls the peripherals for the CCM. The clincher was when I was watching on Vida all the damper motor position requests and what the actual positions were. Changing climate settings (temperature, etc.) for both driver and passenger sides, and saw none of the damper motors were showing any movement. Even pressing the defrost and flow buttons showed no damper movements. A couple of the forums that discussed the LINBus suggested the seat heater may be the first module in line on LINBus 1, which seems to control stuff on the driver side. I replaced the seat heater module under the driver seat with one I pulled from a U-Pull-It yard, and immediately everything started working again. Even the dampers on the passenger side came to life. I suspect the driver side seat heater module shorted or opened up the power supply for the LINBus on both lines. Replacing the bad module restored proper power to the LINBus and unclogged communication.

Cost worked out to about $8. Sure beats spending the thousand plus the stealership would nail me when they just through parts at the problem.
--
Gary D

An actuator motor is not VIN specific. You may want to verify the vent is not damaged, like broken plastic arms in the 850 models.

I doubt a relationship with the seat heater, sounds a bit far fetched. If large feet are under the passenger seat, that may have dislodged a wire.

--
Keeping it running is better than buying new

Thanks for the info. My DiCE box was not showing the damper motor responding, which makes me suspect that is the problem. With the seat heater not showing as being on, even though the button LED is on and Vida showed the LED was on, made me think there was a connection to the damper motor. Some of the sites I looked at talked about the seat heater control module for each seat as being on the same communication bus, and I recall seeing something about a bus error. I will need to have a look perhaps tonight to see what that is all about. The thinking was that if the drivers seat heat module is on the same bus line as the suspect damper motor, they may be impacting each other.
--
Gary D

Can't a flexible heating element fail in the driver's seat of a 15MY old vehicle just by common repeated flexing? One must be able to conduct a continuity test on a heating element.

xemodex.com does not list your problem as common:

Passenger temperature sensor codes
No communication
Liquid spill damage
One of both temperature zones being stuck on full hot or full cold
Fan speed control problems

Damned computers! Should replace all of my cars with 1960 models with a carb and clutch.
--
Keeping it running is better than buying new