Have a weird issue. 97 accord v6. Blend door actuator (black box w/arm that controls the vent functions) at first wasn't working at all.

So I took the box apart, and inspected everything. There was a lot of smeared grease all over the pcb board and contacts, so I cleaned all that off then applied some dialectric grease to the main spinning wheel contacts and all other electrical contacts. It looked like the positive and negative posts for the actual motor itself were pushed back too far, that they were no longer making contact with the motor. So I pushed both a bit forward so they made good contact with the motor terminals.

All the gears looked perfect with no missing teeth or damage. I them just to make sure the system was working as it should.


Put it together and reinstalled. As soon as I turned the key to the ON position, the blend door arm rotated to a certain position.

Tried pressing all the buttons and activating different vent modes....everything. Once the blend door arm gets to that position after being initialized, nothing gets it to move. It always goes to that same position and refuses to respond to anything else.

Here is the position it rotates to:

https://i.imgur.com/YGiqIoZ.jpg

I've tried disassembling the blend door multiple times, putting the arm to various different positions. No matter what, as soon as I reinstall back into the car, it resets back to that exact same pictured position.

Any ideas here? I'm stumped. All the bronze/silver contacts looked good, and I doubt it's the motor or else it wouldn't even move the arm in the above fashion even if it's in the wrong position.

Do these need to be reset/calibrated when replaced? I didn't think so, but if there's any information that'd be awesome.

Thanks!