Blend Door USA

When you change the A/C or Heat vent location knob on your Ram, does it not change which vent(s) the air is coming out of? Sounds like your truck has fallen victim to the infamous failed blend door issue in which the door literally falls off and lays in the bottom of the HVAC box behind your dash. Unfortunately, this is a known issue, and if you're ready to fix it once and for good, check out these high quality aluminum doors from Blend Door USA.

Blend Door USA manufactures solid aluminum replacement HVAC doors to replace the failing plastic doors in your vehicle. They are located in Applegate, Michigan and do all of their production there, nothing is imported from foreign sources. Blend Door USA began in 2006 when they started producing aluminum replacement doors for some of the big name automobile manufactures and have produced in excess of 100,000 doors under these contracts and are still producing them to this day. They are the only manufacturer to mass produce aluminum replacement HVAC doors for any major corporation.

In terms of the manufacturing side, Blend Door USA manufactures all of their products from solid pieces of aluminum. There are no welds or rivets in anything, and its all CNC machined to maintain the highest quality possible and to ensure a perfect fit every time.

The drivers are key-cut so they will properly engage the doors and will never fail. In the instances where a key-cut driver won't work, the drivers are drilled with an offset bore and are held in place with a cap screw. This allows the drivers to stay engaged with the door when there is not an actuator holding it in place, such as the 3rd Gen Ram Dual Zone Blend Door drivers. All splines are broach cut into the drivers to ensure perfect engagement with the electronic actuators.

So why use aluminum instead of steel? Aluminum is much lighter than steel, and it will never rust. Since the aluminum is lighter, they are able to make the doors significantly thicker and still maintain the same weight. This allows the doors to be much stronger than any steel replacement ever could be. Aluminum can be machined in a solid piece, which is why the doors do not have any welds or rivets holding them together. Steel doors are tack welded together, which creates a weak spot and potential failure. For an HVAC system, aluminum is superior in every way. Blend Door USA doors are the strongest in the market, period.

BDUSA uses open cell foam to seal their doors. Most factory open cell foam is a polyester based foam that is biodegradable, which is why it comes apart and blows out of the vents. Open cell foam is a synthetic polyether based foam that is not biodegradable and therefore will not deteriorate like the original foam. A common question is “Why don’t these use closed cell foam like the other guys?” The simple answer is, that would be nice, but it hasn't been found that closed cell foam will perform satisfactorily in an HVAC box. There are a few requirements that foam must meet in order to be acceptable for use on these replacement doors:

• The durometer or “squishiness” of the foam must be soft enough to sufficiently seal the box. The plastic housings have a very loose tolerance for what can be considered “flat.” We’ve had boxes here that have had as much as 1/4 inch gap on the sealing surface when the door was closed. The foam must be able to compress completely on the high side in order fully seal on the low side. Most closed cell foams are too hard to seal properly.
• The foam must be durable enough to withstand the extreme heat and extreme cold that an automobile will experience. The air conditioner evaporator will produce air temperature around 40 degrees F and the heater will produce around 200 degrees F. Don’t forget the interior temp when the car sits outside in the summer sun all day in Arizona or all night in a North Dakota winter. Very few types of foam can withstand this kind of abuse.
• The foam must be American made. We pride ourselves with an American made product produced by American workers. We will not lower our standards by using a cheaper foreign made foam to increase our profit.

Blend Door USA is so confident in their product, that its guaranteed for life. Now you can fix your heater for those cold winter mornings and fix your air conditioner for those hot summer days. Fix it once; fix it right; with Blend Door USA.

We get a lot of calls and e-mails each day with various product, vehicle, and installation questions. Some are completely off the wall and can even catch us off guard at times, but many others are fairly routine, so we thought we'd post some of the most popular questions that can hopefully be a good resource for you.