VW did something really messed-up, and they did it for years. For some reason, VW has built some parts of our cars to fall apart after a few years. There's a part in your dashboard called a blend door. The blend door is a flap in the dash that directs air to your heater and dash vents when you turn the knob to the red. The blend door makes for infinite and immediate adjustment of dash vent temperature, and is actually a really clever idea. Here's where I believe VW screwed it up. Instead of making the door out of a solid piece of material, they made the door out of a piece of galvanized steel with 17 huge holes punched in it. Then they glued foam to both sides of the door through the holes. It works great for a few years, then it doesn't. The foam falls apart and has the very dangerous effect of blowing small chunks of decaying foam into your eyes through the vents while you're driving. And less dangerous (but just as annoying) is the blend door no longer works well. With large open holes in the blend door, full heat or full cold is no longer possible, because the air just blows through it. I'm very surprised that VW hasn't been sued about this ridiculous problem.

So why did the manufacturer choose this assembly technique for at least 35 years? I would think that VW would have caught on if it was done by mistake. For decades I believed that this assembly technique was used to reduce noise inside the dashboard. But lately my opinion has changed to a more cynical explanation. If VW makes the A/C and heat system to become useless after 10 years, then the car won't be comfortable to drive and the car will be discarded. Thus, the owner will need to return to the dealership to buy a new car. I believe a kind of lucrative sabotage of their own product. Not to mention a great disservice to their buyers.

Well, OUR customers don't have to be forced into a showroom and huge monthly payment$ to have a comfy VW. We'll take care of that pesky blend door once and for all. After this repair, you can choose the temperature coming out of your vents from burning hot, to bone-chilling cold, to anywhere in-between. Check out the photos here to see how we do it. Oh, and we can also install infotainment in any car - no matter the year, with new-car style bluetooth for hands free phone and streaming phone media for iphone and Android. I mention that here because your whole dash has to come out to do this work. What better time to install a new stereo?

See that little gray blend door hiding in there? See that little remnant of foam?

Mk4 with dash and heater case removed Do not attempt at home!

Blend door removed, sealed and a patch ready to weld in How many freaking holes did they need? ONE is too many!

Save money on labor overlap. This work is usually done with the heater core, an A/C evaporator, or on it's own. Once the expense is taken on to remove the freon, coolant, dashboard, console, heater and A/C case, we prefer to clean house and take care of it all. So, while we're in this deep we encourage our customers to take advantage of the labor overlap. This work usually runs about $1,000.00 to $1500.00, depending on parts costs for the different models. To put it into perspective, that's the equivalent to 3 or 4 average car payments.