Hi, I'm hoping someone could help me out here, I am completely inept when it comes to cars.

The main center vents next to the emergency warning triangle button have stopped working (blowing air)
The side vents still work on whichever speed you select.

I checked the blower fuse in the engine compartment fusebox and that was OK, which makes sense since the side vents still work.

- Is there another fuse for the main center vents that I don't know about?
- What else could have caused this to stop working? Are there any other components, that if they fail stop the main vents from working. (Air con, maybe?)

My Jazz doesn't have climate control, just the normal functions.

Kindest

Stephen

 

Have you set the mode knob to heat (floor vents), defrost, or heat and defrost? In these modes, no air is sent to the center console vents by design; it comes out in the footwells or at the base of the windscreen instead.

If the mode knob is set to send air to the console vents, it sounds like there's something wrong with that part of the system—something broken in the linkages, or something blocking the vents. It's entirely mechanical, eventually operating a set of dampers/flaps that direct the air wherever it needs to go. There's nothing electrical involved, so no fuses etc. to worry about. (Even the climate control models have pretty much the same setup, except it's all driven by a little motor unit controlled by the computer rather than by a manually operated knob controlled by a person.)

If you haven't done so somewhat recently, it would not hurt at all to check on and replace if needed your cabin air filter, which is located behind the glove box. I don't think that's the main problem, since you are getting airflow, but if badly clogged it could quite substantially reduce the amount of air that gets through the system.

 

Hi Drew,

Yes, sorry I was a dumbass. The center vents are working fine as long as I don't have the mode set to defrost, which is what I was testing.

The reason why I was testing stuff is because the Air Con was no longer getting cold.

Is replacing the air con cannister easy to do or should I just get the air con serviced?

 

Air conditioner work is somewhat specialized. There are indeed kits (at least here in the US) to add refrigerant that aren't too hard to use, but knowing how much to add requires some pressure measurements and so forth that are not so easy to do. Some kits do have the necessary gauges to check that.

On a bit bigger level, though, the reason why A/C would need additional refrigerant is generally because there's a small leak in the system somewhere, so a permanent fix requires more than just adding the coolant. Also, it's possible that improper operation is due to other problems and not loss of refrigerant—malfunctioning sensors in the system, for example, so it's not running when it should. On the whole, I would leave servicing of the A/C system proper to a reputable shop.

(I'm not quite sure what you mean by the A/C "cannister," as I'm not aware of any such part in the system—it has a compressor, a condenser, an expansion valve, an evaporator, and some piping and such connecting it all together. I'm guessing you meant cans of the refrigerant which flows through the system—but the cans are only the containers that the stuff is shipped in.)