Howto: replace V71 recirc valve motor

[logic0n3]

Recirc motor replacement guide

This is a aweful job. You should seriously consider whether it is worth your time and effort. It took me about 3-4 hours to get the motor out and about the same get the new one in and then about 1-2 hours to put everything back together and calibrate with VCDS. So 8-9 hours total. And a lot of frustration. It should be doable in about 3 though, if it went smoothly
You have been warned!
So first, you need a new motor. The part number is 1J2 907 511A. I got mine second hand off ebay from some UK wrecker. In hindsight, I would strongly recommend getting a new one, you never want to have to replace it again.
There are some slight variatations on the procedure, I will just be describing what I did. I largely followed instructions from here Recirc air flap motor (V71) remove and replace guide. - D.I.Y Guides and How to Instructions - uk-mkivs
and I will refere back to that thread for some of the pics below. It is a little fragmented there though.
First thing is to pull out the centre console trim. There are 4 screws, two on each side. Be very careful pulling it out, it is very flimsy.


Then remove the screw that holds some of the trim that is part of the glovebox.

Then remove the 6 screws in the glovebox.



Now you need to take out the piece of foamy stuff underneath. There are two plastic screws and a cable tie type thing. Personally, I just cut the cable tie thing and didn't bother replacing it.

[logic0n3]

Next remove the piece of trim on the side near the door. It just unclips, but mine was well stuck, so be careful. Not totally sure this step is necessary, but might help a little.
You should now be able to see the air blower and the v71 recirc valve motor (well... sort of). Remove the air blower by removing the two screws at the bottom and sliding it down. Be careful, I have heard the blower is fragile. You should also cut the cable tie that holds the bundle of wires in place. You have to get your hand in there somehow.


Once you have found the V71 recirc motor and had a good look around, have a look for the screw holding it in place. It's underneath, like the screws for the air blower, but much further back. Now you have to unclip the arm to the upper valve flap. If you look up into the where the blower was, fairly high up there is a flap which the motor arm attaches to. There is a slot in this flap which the motor arm clips into. Some images courtesy Graeme86 posted uk-mkivs.net show this nicely.



Graeme86 said that he couldn't access the slot from the the air blower, but I could without any real issues. Maybe my motor had siezed in a different position, or maybe I just used more force to turn it so that I could reach it. Something like a flat head stuby screw driver probably works best to depress the locking tab.
So congratuations you now have the motor out! That wasn't that hard was it? Who am I kidding, it was ridiculous.
And there is more to come.

Now you need to change arm over to the new motor (assuming it didn't come with one). Here is mine with the arm on the new motor on the right.


Now the fun part, putting the new motor in. This bit took me about 4 hours, because I couldn't work out how it went back in. Here's the trick I missed, the triangular piece circled above has to go into a slot in the mount, pictured below.


The way I did it was to plug the cable into the motor (hard to do in place), put the main shaft into position, then rotate the motor into position, makng sure it went into the slot. Then you have to clip the arm into the flap. You can manually move the lower flap to make sure the main shaft has slotted in correctly.
At this point it could be a good idea to turn on the ignition and make sure everything works.
If so, ALL DONE!
Well, almost.
Once you have reassembled everything you need to do a calibration with VCDS. I folllowed instruction from Resetting the V71 recirc flap on VAG COM - Diagnostics & VCDS - BRISKODA.net - The Skoda Forum and Community
Basically, log into vag-com, open module 08 (HVAC), do basic settings involving block 002, allow vag-com to calibrate the flap.

Good luck!

[CamYoung]

I did this on the weekend as well. I just removed and cleaned my old motor, and it is working fine ( for how long who knows!) I took some extra time and slid the main wiring loom down under the fan box, and also slid the heavy firm sound matting down out of the way. This made heaps of extra room for my hand, and the job was a lot easier. The thing that stuffed me for 30 minutes, was that I removed the holding screw but could not get the motor out, turns out there is another screw just in front which is part of the fan box.
probably took me 3 hours all up, but I had already pulled the glovebox out to fix the fan, so that sped up things a bit.