The A/C went out on my 2000 Nissan Quest. I took it to the shop and they couldn’t find the problem and recommended not replacing the it because of the age and value of the car. However, the defroster doesn’t work so it’s almost impossible to see when it rains because the windshield has so much moisture on the inside. There is nothing blowing on it. Opening the windows did not work. Any suggestions for a way around this without an expensive repair?
Do any of the other vents work? If you turn the fan on high and select the floor vent or the mid-vents, does air come blasting out of them?
All you can do is put heat to the defrost when the windshield fogs up. That’s how you do it in cars without A/C (i.e., like the good old days). Make sure you’re not on “recirc.”
I’m with TT. Does the blower fan work at all? Through the face vents or vents under the dash? If it does blow, does the air warm up when on hot?
If the blower motor isn’t working even in the HEAT or VENT mode then that should be looked into first. As a guess I would say there is a power connection problem to the motor. The speed control may be bad, a fuse is blown, or the motor is faulty. These are pretty easy things to check for a good tech and shouldn’t be much to fix if the motor is okay. You may want to find a different shop to work on this that could give you a reasonable repair estimate at least.
The blower fans for face and vents under the dash work - just not to the windshield! This car doesn’t seem to have a “recirc”.
Okay, even if there is no recirc that doesn’t matter really. What does matter is the blower motor works but the venting for the defrost mode doesn’t appear to be working? The trouble could be fairly simple or it may require a significant amount of labor to fix it. It just depends on what the trouble really is. Some vent systems work with the cars vacuum lines and others use electric power. I’m not sure which one is used for your car. You may want a different shop check things out.
The “recirc” button should be near the heater hot/cold knob. It looks like a little car with a c-shaped arrow inside and lights up when you push it. If no air comes out at the base of the windshield when in defrost, the damper under the dash is not moving. Usually the motor that moves it fails.
@insightful is on it. The motor that directs air to the windshield has failed. When you put the defrost on it goes automatically into fresh air mode.
Talk sweet to it. If that won’t work, give it $5.