Duct-Air selector/diverter box flapper repair

[Case XX]

Hopefully I have this in the correct forum, I wouldn't think this would really qualify for the builds/projects forums as it's just a small fix so I am putting it here.

I recently bought a 68 pickup and have been working on several small fixes on it. The flapper on the diverter box was broke and I found through searches on the forums that this is a common problem. I wasn't able to find any posts on here with a good repair so after giving it a little thought this is the repair that I came up with which I believe should be permanent.

This is what I had after I pulled the flapper which is apparently very common.



So I dug out some scrap sheetmetal I had around and started cutting.



I took the sheetmetal and the selector bar to the vice and used the selector bar and a hammer to start rolling the sheetmetal to form the end that encloses the selector bar.





Once I had the sheetmetal rolled for the selector bar I trimmed it down to fit the back of the flapper.



I then dug out all the broken pieces from the rubber gasket that surrounds the flapper.



And then I inserted the sheetmetal into the gasket on the back of the flapper.



I then test fit the assembly in the diverter box.



The fit was good so I mixed up some epoxy and pulled the sheet metal away from the plastic flapper and epoxied the two pieces together, I immediately installed the flapper back in the box, positioned it exactly where I wanted it and then drilled 3 holes and put screws through the plastic into sheet metal to keep the original flapper properly positioned against the sheet metal while the epoxy setup. The screws will stay in position as they will only help to keep the assembly together permanently.




I then used red locktite to permanently bond the selector rod to the flapper once I positioned them correctly to seal in both settings and confirmed the selector bar was activating the AC switch when it should.

This was really a pretty simple fix, I probably spent 30-45 minutes on this whole thing though this time did not include removing the box from the truck as it was not installed the truck, I don't expect that I will ever have to deal with this issue on this truck again.

[396C20]

Great Idea!

Nice job on the pics and writeup. Saved for future reference.

Thanks for posting it.

[Leftlane]

Thank you for taking time to share that with us.
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[eightbanger]

Well done mate, I was just toying with the idea of buying one of the replacement units on Ebay, but your repair has inspired me to have a go and repair mine. Thank you!

[Katrina/10]

Good fix!