Passenger Sdie Aircon blowing hot air when select cold

[bubba966]

Hi Bubba,

Thank you so much for the photos. I have found the heater solenoid and no, mine does not have a cover on it. It is also using the hex type nuts on it. Should i go and buy the proper caps? I will try knocking on the solenoid as soon as i can fix the erratic idling issue. Are the caps supposed to be torqued to any specific value?

Only reason to change the hex nuts out for the cap nuts is if you want to install the cover on the heater valve. The cover doesn't need to be on there. BMW must have decided to save a buck or two on some models and not install the cap nuts & cover.

Only reason I went through the trouble of doing it to my friend's Touring & my car is that it just looked like something was missing. It took a bit of work to figure out how to get the cover on when the car had the hex nuts as the part #'s for the cap nuts wasn't easy to find. It'd always bothered her from day one that it looked like that. And when I finally found my car it was just as annoying to me. But that's fixed now.

As I recall the nuts (either hex or cap) need to be torqued fairly lightly. It's easy to over torque them and snap the mounting posts off. And apparently you should loosen those up a bit when you're tapping on the solenoid to get it working again. I've not had the solenoid stuck yet, so I've not tried tapping it to get it going again.

[dreman77]

Hi,

My passenger side aircon blows hot air even though the selector is at cold. I;m guessing its the temperature sensor. The question is how do I get to it and verify that it is the cause of the fault.

The airflow seems very low - will need to change microfilter. Does my model have a cabin air filter?

I also have the antifreeze smell in the cabin. I'm guessing heater core.

thanks

hi,

i tapped the heater solenoid and nothing happened. The passenger side was still blowing hot air. So i decided to play with the switches on the aircon control. they were all to the extreme left. I moved the interior circulation switch switch to the right and i noticed air was blowing out from my foot area. The passenger side also started becoming cooler. It was not as cold as the driver side aircon but definitely not as hot as before. Is this the normal operation of the aircon?

Thanks

[Bimmerman]

I heard a story low gas pressure in the aircon system would automatically divert all gas to the drivers side only as a comfort/safety feature. Not 100% sure that applied to the e34's, though it is certainly the case on e39's/e46's etc.

[dreman77]

I heard a story low gas pressure in the aircon system would automatically divert all gas to the drivers side only as a comfort/safety feature. Not 100% sure that applied to the e34's, though it is certainly the case on e39's/e46's etc.

i see. well, i took out the microfilter today and boy was there alot of crud in there. It was filthy. Black in color too. Will bring it to the air con shop for a top up of gas and see how it goes.

Btw, while I was removing everything to remove the microfilter, i noticed this oily black substance on what i think is the evaporator hosing. There is a rubber piece there and it was covered i oil. Any ideas what this might be?

thanks