freshxdough wrote

CRuben09 wrote

freshxdough wrote

Worst part about it is if you accidentally end up pushing the recirculating flap past it's end stop resulting in poor air flow and even a slight air resistance/whistle that can be heard during fan operation. Ask me how I know because I did it last week when I serviced my microfilter. I've done thousands of micro filters and the G01 apparently is the only one you can possibly do this with. Yesterday I had to remove the complete glove box, passenger knee airbag and the blower fan to be able to access the flap and flip it back over. This is a known issue and there is an SIB for it. According to the SIB replacement of the complete air conditioning box is necessary. I wasn't about to take my car back to my own dealer for that lol.

What are the odds of finding your post? So, 2 weeks ago, under the regular maintenance, the service center replaced the microfilter. When I picked up the car, I immediately noticed that the fan blower wasn't as potent as before, and a whistling noise could be heard when turning on/off the A/C unit.

Is that flap located at the top of the microfilter housing? I found the one for the outside air which is I believe on the back side. I had to manually force it, so I could get more air, but if I press the recirculating button it doesn't do anything. Can you explain step by step what you did? If you can of course.

Thanks!

Step by step was described in my previous post. If you remove the micro filter and look up inside the housing you will see the flap that is sitting incorrectly, like my first photo.

I chose to try and flip the flap myself. You will need to remove the glove box with T20 torx bits. Then also remove the 3x T20 screws on the air box that are installed straight up and remove the blower fan. Then you should see what my 2nd and 3rd photos are. I had the ignition on just so there was power going to the flap motor just so I wasn't pushing against an unpowered flap. I flipped it around almost a whole 180 degrees then turned off the ignition. Turned it back on and selected and deselected recirc and watched the flap work normally again. Drove to and from work today and it's working normally now.

gugin wrote

If it's possible to push the recirculating flap past its end stop in one direction, shouldn't it be possible to pull the flap in the reverse direction to restore it to the correct side of the end stop? Perhaps using a suction hose to "grab" the flap so you can pull it.

freshxdough wrote

I don't believe a suction hose will work. From the bottom you would need to pull downwards and there's really no way to do that easily from underneath the flap. You would need to rotate it nearly 180*. I have small hands and I couldn't get in there to be able to grab it. You would have to use some long radiator pics and even then who know did you could do it cleanly without damaging the flap or the gasket. If I encounter another one in the future I will see if I can do it from the bottom knowing now which direction it needs to rotate

freshxdough wrote

BMW documentation states to put the air into FRESH AIR mode, (recirculating air light not lit up). I'll have to do more research into this as I believe that putting into recirc would make the flap be flat against the housing and this further away from knocking it when installing the new microfilter. Although I will say, I put my air specifically into Recirc and this is what happened. So I'm sure BMW knows what they are doing. I will do it in fresh air mode next time and see how it turns out

CRuben09 wrote

freshxdough wrote

BMW documentation states to put the air into FRESH AIR mode, (recirculating air light not lit up). I'll have to do more research into this as I believe that putting into recirc would make the flap be flat against the housing and this further away from knocking it when installing the new microfilter. Although I will say, I put my air specifically into Recirc and this is what happened. So I'm sure BMW knows what they are doing. I will do it in fresh air mode next time and see how it turns out

I did it today. Thanks to your walkthrough it took me almost and hour to complete. The most difficult part was removing the top screw in the fan housing. Other than that, everything was pretty much straightforward. It was in fact that flap being forced all the way up.

freshxdough wrote

BMW documentation states to put the air into FRESH AIR mode, (recirculating air light not lit up). I'll have to do more research into this as I believe that putting into recirc would make the flap be flat against the housing and this further away from knocking it when installing the new microfilter. Although I will say, I put my air specifically into Recirc and this is what happened. So I'm sure BMW knows what they are doing. I will do it in fresh air mode next time and see how it turns out

freshxdough wrote

BMW documentation states to put the air into FRESH AIR mode, (recirculating air light not lit up). I'll have to do more research into this as I believe that putting into recirc would make the flap be flat against the housing and this further away from knocking it when installing the new microfilter. Although I will say, I put my air specifically into Recirc and this is what happened. So I'm sure BMW knows what they are doing. I will do it in fresh air mode next time and see how it turns out

Fast400 wrote

When I made the video, I was in fresh air mode...by luck! Maybe I should mention this in the video description. Thanks!

Yobyot wrote

Worse, the slot the filter goes in is curved. Clearly, the engineer who designed it never had to replace it.

Drexel_Lake wrote

If you think that's hard you probably shouldn't be a DIYer.

freshxdough wrote

BMW have just released an SIB for this issue after microfilter replacement. No parts replacement necessary. This issue won't be caused by anything other than recently replacing the microfilter.

They had talked about it previously but actually released repair info now. Turns out exactly what i described earlier is the repair. Remove the blower fan, and push the flap back to its normal position. You then recheck it to ensure the stepper motor did not get damaged at all. May have to "readdress the stepper motors" and "reinitialize the stepper motors" but I think that will be a rare occasion.