Oscillation Recalibration?

[Mrgimme]

It seems when I bought the car the two center vents which go back and forth went further in their travel...

I may have made the mistake of adjusting them when they were on...

And at times one will move while the other won't... They start to move and then stop...

What is the story? Another Bell and Whistle destined to break?

Is there a way to reset them? So they "full travel" again?

[jcrome04]

Maybe a track is loose?? Pull the vents out and see if you need to straighten anything up.

I'd say the worst thing you could do is stick something in there while they are on! ah! :D haha

[curiousB]

You mean your "Intelligent Swing Register Assembly" (ISRA) isn't working? Got to love the names they come up for these assemblies. If you have NAV just check to be sure the setting under climate is the one with the vanes moving back and forth as some of the climate modes don’t enable the vanes in motion.

It looks a bit involved to get the ISRA out. You have to pry out each the driver and passenger temperature switches. They have plastic claws so you need to be careful not to break them and not scratch up the opening. This exposes a screw on each side that holds the panel in place. Then the panel comes out but there are four more claws that hold it in that have to be gently persuaded. This is if you don’t have NAV. It’s probably more elaborate with NAV.

This may be a lot of trouble to fix for a minor feature. I guess it depends how mechanically mind you are and willing to take on the disassembly and repair.

[curiousB]

I just took at look at my car. The swing travel is about 50% of the back and forth motion that the vanes can be manually adjusted to. There is some sort of clutch or slip mechanism so you can manually move the vanes. I guess the idea is you can determine where you want that 50% of travel to be. By moving vane you can have that travel centered in the middle, from extreme right to about center, or extreme left to about center. It doesn’t appear you can get complete swing from extreme right to extreme left.

So might be nothing is wrong at all and you should just adjust vanes so the swing portion is directed where you want it. I would just play around with the setting and see if you can get it like you prefer. As there is a clutch I don’t think you have to worry about jamming the mechanism and bending a linkage (as I previously thought).

[Mrgimme]

Thanks for the great replies... I do have NAV and wonder if anyone else has seen them stutter or stop.

My 2004 does not have 30K yet and I wonder if there are folks out there with 100k that have had them going back and forth the whole time?

And introducing a new standard ending to all questions relating to fixable items.

HMTR? (how much to replace)

[Will B.]

Mine vary their swing based on how fast the air is blowing. If at full blast, they don't swing at all, and if it's at one or two "bars", then it swings the whole length. Somewhere in between, and it swings about 33-50% of it's range.

I'm not sure if this is actually related to the speed of the blower or just the auto climate control (i.e. when it's on full blast, it's because the car is hot, not because I set it to wind gale setting).

[jhm555]

Thanks for the great replies... I do have NAV and wonder if anyone else has seen them stutter or stop.

My 2004 does not have 30K yet and I wonder if there are folks out there with 100k that have had them going back and forth the whole time?

And introducing a new standard ending to all questions relating to fixable items.

HMTR? (how much to replace)

I have a 2001 LS430 with 160K+ miles. The registers swing back and forth. My understanding is that the system senses the amount of heat and adjusts the swing automatically. The swing will also vary if you have pressed the "Dual" control which tells the system whether or not you have a front seat passenger. If there is not passenger, the registers decrease the passenger side airflow and swing and direct more toward you, the driver.