Now that you have removed the climate control module from your Civic: Removing Heater Control Panel/Climate Control Module from EG (’92-’95) Civic it is time to get down to the business of taking it apart. In my situation, I was looking to fix my problems with the AC system. I know in some posts, people are looking to repair or upgrade lighting.

There are already some detailed resources out there about how to do this, but I feel like they all leave some important details out. This thread is going to try to cover all the relevant details and make it as easy as possible for you to repair the panel/module.

NOTE: what I am referring to as the Climate Control Module, the FSM calls the Heater Control Panel. Just so I do not have to keep typing climate control module/heater control panel, I will simply use “CCM/HCP”, okay?

 

If you removed your CCM/HCP as I described here https://honda-tech.com/forums/honda-...civic-3353362/ then you should have a CCM/HCP with the pigtail harness and heater cable still attached:



You can disconnect the harness connectors to make things easier to work on:


I recommend leaving the heater cable in the holder. I saw one video where the subject broke one of the plastic tabs that secures the outer cable housing. They used crazy glue to keep the cable housing in place, not sure how well that worked. If the housing is not secure, it will push out of the CCM/HCP, and you will not be able to change the amount of hot water entering the heater core, so be careful! I will show you how to take apart the CCM/HCP while leaving the heater cable in place.

 

You can remove the lever arm that moves the actual cable by first removing the lock at the pivot point. It can be difficult to twist the first time, so I used a needle-nose pliers:



Once you have removed this lock, you can slide the lever arm out from under the metal plate up by the user interface:

 

You can remove the fan speed switch if you want, but there is no need to do so:

 

Next, remove the metal plate on the bottom of the CCM/HCP that secure the “sliders” for fan speed and temp selection. There are 5 screws that face the top of the CCM/HCP, and one smaller screw that faces the front. I try to detail the orientation of the screws in these pictures. Note that the longer screws are on the outer edges, where there are 2 screws front/back of each other. The longer screws are in the back of the two:

 

Once the metal plate is free, you may notice some type of grease/lube on the underside. The spare I bought off eBay had more grease than the CCM/HCP I removed from my car. I bought my Civic with ~40k miles on it, so I am fairly sure mine has never been opened since the car left the factory. The spare – who knows? You can clean this up and replace if the grease has a lot of dirt/dust/debris/dog hair in it:

 

If you want to replace the light bulbs, you will need to remove the dark plastic face plate.

If you just need to repair the solder joints, you can leave the face plate in place and skip to the next post.

The face plate is secured by some plastic tabs on the side and top. Be gentle with this old plastic! You just need to go slowly and pry up a little bit:




You will need to decide if you want to remove the “*****” from the front of the sliding controls for fan speed and air temperature. If you have removed the fan speed switch and the lever arm for the heater cable, you can leave the ***** on and raise the sliders, so they clear the ridge on the white plastic. The ***** can be removed by gently pulling them straight out:




If you are a little OCD like me, you can remove the push-buttons for AC, vent selection, recirc, etc. here you can see the little slots under the buttons. If you put the flat of a small screwdriver in there and gently turn the screwdriver, the buttons pop off:



There is a translucent surround for illumination:



Here are the LEDs under the push-buttons:

 

Next up, we need to separate the case of the CCM/HCP that contains the board. There are 3 plastic clips on the top of the CCM/HCP, but there is a screw and small clip on the bottom. Unscrew the screw, note the small clip right behind where the screw was, pop that clip loose, and then pop the 3 clips on top:






Now you can slide the inner workings out of the shell:

 

Time to examine at the solder joints for the AC button on the board. In our US-market vehicles, these would be the 6 joints furthest towards the passenger side, right behind the AC button:



You can see I had failures around mine. Here are the joints on the spare I purchased:




Here are the joints on the CCM/HCP that came out of my Civic:



You can see both had failing joints!

 

If you are not handy with a soldering iron, call one of your friends who is! I am lucky to have a friend who has worked with PCB assembly for years. He has a very cool set-up and said he could teach me how to de-solder, and then re-solder my bad joints.

You can de-solder with a copper wick. You press the wick on the joint, press the solder iron on the joint, and then watch the molten solder run into the wick:




Or you can use a vacuum. You heat the joint, and then right when the solder melts, you apply vacuum and suck up the old solder:



Here is what the de-soldered joint looks like:

 

Then you can re-solder the joint. This is a skill to get just the right amount of solder. You want the new joint to look like a volcano, not like a blob:

 

Now it is time to re-assemble the CCM/HCP. Instead of just saying that re-assembly is the reverse of disassembly, I took a lot of pictures of all the pieces. My OCD got the better of me and I took the CCM/HCP completely apart. Here we go putting everything back together:

 

I installed the push buttons, and light surround:

 

In this picture you can see how the faceplate has an insert – probably making it easy to configure for different markets:



Once the faceplate is back on, I inserted the inner workings into the shell:




Remember, there is a clip on the bottom:




3 clips on top:




And the screw on the bottom:

 

I opted to clean off all the old grease for the sliders and put some new grease on:

 

Then you can screw the metal plate back on:

 

I put some grease on the pivot point for the heater cable lever arm:

 

Re-connect the pigtail harness:

 

Now you are ready to stuff the CCM/HCP back into your Civic!

See this thread for details: Removing Heater Control Panel/Climate Control Module from EG (’92-’95) Civic

 

Hello!

My automatic climate control button seems to not want to stay on after being pressed. It will stay on if you are continuously pressing it down. Is there a fix to this? Could it be in need of a re-soldering?

Thank you for your time

 

I am not sure about an automatic climate control...
What vehicle is this in?
What button is not working?

 

this button that is above the off label

 

Ah, that is the recirc button!

To be clear, that is not an automatic setting. What is that button not doing for you?

Does the fresh air setting button behave in the same way?

 

ah ok thank you! The button doesn't seen to want to stay on when pressed. It will turn on the fans when continuously pressed though

 

I am not sure what you mean by "stay on". Pressing the recirc button should NOT provide power to the fan motor however.
Good luck!