Hello all-
I replaced my wife's heater fan motor today. In the process, I noticed that the bellcrank for the outside air flapper was disconnected from the recirculation motor's square shaft. This explains why the flapper would clunk as you were first accelerating sometimes. I tried to put the bellcrank back on, but it broke because the plastic was brittle.

Doesn't the flapper normally close off the outside air unless the AC is on and you switch on the recirculation? We don't spend much time in heavy traffic so we don't have much need to use recirculation. Will it do any harm to wire the flapper in the closed (no outside air) position at least until I replace the arm?

Is the bellcrank a dealer or junkyard only item?

When I tried to make the recirculation motor run so that I could tell which way to put the bellcrank on, it wouldn't move. The engine was running, the AC was on, and the recirculation switch was turned on and off. It also was near freezing out, so there was a good chance the AC wasn't operating anyhow, but I don't know for sure if that would make any difference.

On a related note, do you know why the heat doesn't come out at the floor very well or at all? My wife says that when she switches from defrost to floor, it makes noises like flappers are moving and the defrost lessens some, but the floor does nothing (although it sometimes will eventually work). It sounds like the defrost motor is trying to close, but the floor motor is working poorly at best? Is this a related problem to the recirculation motor not running?
Thanks
Dave