TLDR- get excited, you can do this yourself for $35. It will take hours… But you don’t have to take the whole dash out to replace the blend door actuator! Just a little bit of… modification is required.
I have seen several posts about the blend door actuators causing a 45 second delay for the climate control system when they die. I had the same problem. If you have the driver side go out, its an easy repair, and there are tutorials on youtube and here for fixing/replacing the driver side blend door actuator... unfortunately, there was no such guide for the passenger side as far as my googling would find... so I went in head first hearing that it was an entire dash-out operation and that it would be $3000 from the dealer for this type of repair. I saw that someone found out you could do some cutting on the dash supports on the 2nd gen sienna to get this part out, so I kept my saw at the ready and was more than willing to get messy.This isn’t exactly step by step since I didn’t know I’d be victorious, but here goes.
Diagnosis: take off your kick panels on the driver’s right or the passenger’s left, under there you should see some white gears and lever arms. The blend doors should move when you go from max cold up to max heat. If they don’t move, that’s the one you need to fix. The bottom one on the passenger side controls heat/cold. If both those heat cold ones work, there’s a second one above that one that does a bunch of other mixing controls. It’s much harder to see unless you remove the glovebox.
So first off, I couldn’t even find a full dashboard removal video… not a good sign already. Basically take the glove box off, then take that long trim piece that has the info/trip buttons on it. Watch this video till the two minute mark then STOP! You don’t need to remove the top glove box!
Next you will need to take the box that holds the glove box out, there’s I think 4 screws on that. You will need to remove the bottom right kick panel to get to the bottom right screw on the glove box holder. THen there's a vent tube thing that brings air down to blow on your feet. That splits in two pieces and then you can stick a screwdriver or pry tool around the place it hooks to the car and the catch will release and it will pop out.
And now you see the blend door actuators!
![Image]()
Next you need to remove a couple screws on the air blower motor assembly. This is so you can flex that whole assembly a quarter inch to the right so you can wiggle the blend door actuators out of the hole. One is on top right, and the other is a nut/washer that’s tucked a bit under the carpet on the bottom right of the blower motor assembly.
First do some marking on the levers to show where they were so it’s easier to put back together. I set it to max cold, let the adjustments happen, then turn the car off and mark the positions. The big wheel is most important.
Ok, now find the three screws that hold on the two blend door actuators as one assembly. The top one can be unscrewed through the fresh air/recirculate door. You do need to turn the hvac system to recirculate so it opens up that vent. once you have removed the 3 screws. pull out the whole assembly. It’s hard to get it out, but wiggle it down and towards you and it should come out. I needed to pull on the blower motor towards the right by about a quarter inch because it was sticking
Here’s the part number of the assembly but you don’t need to buy this, just buy the servo motor and replace it in the assembly: 2011 Toyota SIENNA Hvac air inlet door actuator. Servo sub - - 8710608101 | Toyota Parts Overstock, Lakeland FL
Servo motor (they are all the same!): https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/.../automotive-van-2011-toyota-sienna?q=blend+door+actuator+toyota+sienna&pos=0#rr
You can figure out how to trade out one of the actuators at this point. It’s pretty simple. There’s a little catch tab for the wheels that you can pop the wheels off and get them back on the new ones.
![Image]()
I had spent about 1 hour to get to this point… now for the pain. I spent 3.5 hours figuring out how to get it back together. Total misery. I’ll pray for you if you attempt this. It’s insanely hard to get everything lined up and assembled. On top of that you can’t fit it back in there! Arrrrgggh!
My technique was to put the two wheels above, into the car first, then negotiate the two servo motors onto them. So painful, but I don’t think there’s a better way.
Here’s the 2 spots where I cut on the inside of the car:
![Image]()
After pic:
![Image]()
On the servo motor assembly, I also had to cut these areas out:
![Image]()
Once you have those areas cut out, you should only need an hour to curse and fanangle it into place. It’s so frustrating. I highly recommend checking every time you put that large wheel into place to rotate it around and verify it goes almost all the way around. If you don’t have all the little arm tabs in the right slots it will not rotate correctly! The top one (red) goes in the outside track, the black one goes in the center one and the white lower one (yellow) goes in the track in between.
![Image]()
For the lower servo wheel/gear it is easier, but you need to make sure the gear goes in the right spot, it has a section with a bump and that needs to mesh with the bump in the servo gear (blue). Then you have to get all that to stay while you wiggle the servo assembly around it, and into place. Don’t forget that last arm at the very top that seemed to work best if I had it on the servo assembly before installing.
Once you finaly get it all back together, get those 3 screws in, plug the servos in and TEST. I unplugged my battery for 5 minutes, and turned on the dome lights to make sure it was a good reset. Then turned on the car and immediately the HVAC kicked on. Next check all the functions out to make sure all the levers are in the right spot. I had to partially disassemble again since I didn’t have the gears in the right spot on the bottom servo (ARRGGGHHH). Thankfully I could leave the top screw in and only remove the bottom two and flex it out of the way while bending the gear piece into the right spot I talked about earlier.
TADA! You fixed it! We both are amazing. I’m so so sorry you had to go through this. I hope I cut a few hours off the job by knowing where worked for me to cut.
-Joe
I have seen several posts about the blend door actuators causing a 45 second delay for the climate control system when they die. I had the same problem. If you have the driver side go out, its an easy repair, and there are tutorials on youtube and here for fixing/replacing the driver side blend door actuator... unfortunately, there was no such guide for the passenger side as far as my googling would find... so I went in head first hearing that it was an entire dash-out operation and that it would be $3000 from the dealer for this type of repair. I saw that someone found out you could do some cutting on the dash supports on the 2nd gen sienna to get this part out, so I kept my saw at the ready and was more than willing to get messy.This isn’t exactly step by step since I didn’t know I’d be victorious, but here goes.
Diagnosis: take off your kick panels on the driver’s right or the passenger’s left, under there you should see some white gears and lever arms. The blend doors should move when you go from max cold up to max heat. If they don’t move, that’s the one you need to fix. The bottom one on the passenger side controls heat/cold. If both those heat cold ones work, there’s a second one above that one that does a bunch of other mixing controls. It’s much harder to see unless you remove the glovebox.
So first off, I couldn’t even find a full dashboard removal video… not a good sign already. Basically take the glove box off, then take that long trim piece that has the info/trip buttons on it. Watch this video till the two minute mark then STOP! You don’t need to remove the top glove box!
And now you see the blend door actuators!
Next you need to remove a couple screws on the air blower motor assembly. This is so you can flex that whole assembly a quarter inch to the right so you can wiggle the blend door actuators out of the hole. One is on top right, and the other is a nut/washer that’s tucked a bit under the carpet on the bottom right of the blower motor assembly.
First do some marking on the levers to show where they were so it’s easier to put back together. I set it to max cold, let the adjustments happen, then turn the car off and mark the positions. The big wheel is most important.
Ok, now find the three screws that hold on the two blend door actuators as one assembly. The top one can be unscrewed through the fresh air/recirculate door. You do need to turn the hvac system to recirculate so it opens up that vent. once you have removed the 3 screws. pull out the whole assembly. It’s hard to get it out, but wiggle it down and towards you and it should come out. I needed to pull on the blower motor towards the right by about a quarter inch because it was sticking
Here’s the part number of the assembly but you don’t need to buy this, just buy the servo motor and replace it in the assembly: 2011 Toyota SIENNA Hvac air inlet door actuator. Servo sub - - 8710608101 | Toyota Parts Overstock, Lakeland FL
Servo motor (they are all the same!): https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/.../automotive-van-2011-toyota-sienna?q=blend+door+actuator+toyota+sienna&pos=0#rr
You can figure out how to trade out one of the actuators at this point. It’s pretty simple. There’s a little catch tab for the wheels that you can pop the wheels off and get them back on the new ones.
I had spent about 1 hour to get to this point… now for the pain. I spent 3.5 hours figuring out how to get it back together. Total misery. I’ll pray for you if you attempt this. It’s insanely hard to get everything lined up and assembled. On top of that you can’t fit it back in there! Arrrrgggh!
My technique was to put the two wheels above, into the car first, then negotiate the two servo motors onto them. So painful, but I don’t think there’s a better way.
Here’s the 2 spots where I cut on the inside of the car:
After pic:
On the servo motor assembly, I also had to cut these areas out:
Once you have those areas cut out, you should only need an hour to curse and fanangle it into place. It’s so frustrating. I highly recommend checking every time you put that large wheel into place to rotate it around and verify it goes almost all the way around. If you don’t have all the little arm tabs in the right slots it will not rotate correctly! The top one (red) goes in the outside track, the black one goes in the center one and the white lower one (yellow) goes in the track in between.
For the lower servo wheel/gear it is easier, but you need to make sure the gear goes in the right spot, it has a section with a bump and that needs to mesh with the bump in the servo gear (blue). Then you have to get all that to stay while you wiggle the servo assembly around it, and into place. Don’t forget that last arm at the very top that seemed to work best if I had it on the servo assembly before installing.
Once you finaly get it all back together, get those 3 screws in, plug the servos in and TEST. I unplugged my battery for 5 minutes, and turned on the dome lights to make sure it was a good reset. Then turned on the car and immediately the HVAC kicked on. Next check all the functions out to make sure all the levers are in the right spot. I had to partially disassemble again since I didn’t have the gears in the right spot on the bottom servo (ARRGGGHHH). Thankfully I could leave the top screw in and only remove the bottom two and flex it out of the way while bending the gear piece into the right spot I talked about earlier.
TADA! You fixed it! We both are amazing. I’m so so sorry you had to go through this. I hope I cut a few hours off the job by knowing where worked for me to cut.
-Joe
