Adding rear hvac . How involved??

[Kikinz24]

I recently purchased a wrecked 2015 PI With the 3.5 ecoboost. Low miles and in really good shape. It was a k9 unit so obviously it needs cleaned and has no real interior in it.. anyhow. I have a 2014 xlt parts car. How involved would it be to add the rear hvac to the PI. I HAVE everything needed from the donor car. Rear unit wiring and lines for under the car. Anyhow my real question is is it plug and play? If I plug it in will the features work with my hvac bezel from the Xlt or is there a lot more involved.?

 

[KayGee]

Since no one else is chiming in, I'll give you my take.

Hardware-wise - I would think you can transfer many/most of the parts over from one vehicle to the other - check fordparts.com to compare part #s for retail and PIU to see if there are any parts specific to either that you may need to order. I'm not sure if all the electrical wiring is present in the PIU, but you should be able to compare as you pull parts from one vehicle and install in the other.

Software-wise - I would assume you will need to make some changes with IDS or Forscan to update one (or more) modules that the vehicle now has "rear HVAC".

Good luck - this is a pretty sizable project and you are probably going to need to strip most of the interior out of the vehicle to do this.

 

[Kikinz24]

I'm already tearing the entire interior out anyways . I have the stone leather interior from the parts car. So I'm not worried about that aspect I have the full body harness which I was thinking I could either swap it out or just pull the wired and input them in the pins on my current harness if there's no connections there now. The goal is to turn this to essentially a sport in all aspects for a fraction of the cost

 

[KayGee]

Got any pics of the vehicles you are working with? What did you pay for them?

The only reason I ask is because I've seen seen 2014/5 sports for $15 with 100K+ miles and <$25K with 60-100K miles at retail (less at auction). I'm sure some may have a carfax history, but I assume yours would to if the base vehicle is a wrecked 2015 PIU. I've been watching a lot of PIUs and PISs at auction the last year and haven't seen any low mileage used ones that went all that cheap, especially EB's, unless they were absolutely destroyed.

 

[Kikinz24]

It's a 2015 all white. Paid $6500 for it after fees and all has 39,680 on it. It has the 3.5 ecoboost. Base interior with sync. . But no rear air. Obviously lol. It was hit high passenger side top rail i gave $1300 for the parts car .it was pretty well stripped body wise but had the seats 2 door panels and all the trim panels. And the rails are all in tact. So I had to buy a few misc things. Pass roof air bag. Headlight and fender .

 

[Kikinz24]

This isn't the first explorer I've put together using my parts car. I also bought a 2015 base 4wd 3.5 hit drivers front only had 9k miles on it. I got it done and on the road have been searching internet and auctions for one hit passenger side so I could use up the rest of this parts car and scrap the shell. I posted in the other section or the forum trying to put a 8" mft setup in the base. With no sync. The radio worked fine but i couldn't get the heater controls to work at all. So i just left the factory radio in that one.. it's the wife's car

 

[KayGee]

It's a 2015 all white. Paid $6500 for it after fees and all has 39,680 on it. It has the 3.5 ecoboost. Base interior with sync.

That seems awful cheap. Must have been a small local auction and not manheim. How badly damaged was it? How much are you putting into it - $ and/or time? Any pics?

 

[Kikinz24]

see if this pic pops up. Have a hard time getting them to upload . Well time wise I'll probably have maybe 20 hours into it . I had to buy the fender and fender liner headlight roof bag and modules. I'll have roughly 8500 into it all said and done. If I include what I paid for the parts car which I've already used to fix one other car before.

 

[Kikinz24]

(lost photo)

 

[KayGee]

That looks driveable. I can't believe it went for $6,500 at auction. Most of the ones I've seen in the last year were much worse and went for double that. If it were me, I would have probably just fixed it and flipped it. You could probably get $20K or more for a 15 PIU EB with 40K miles.

 

[Kikinz24]

It drove right on and off the trailer and into the garage. Lol.. And I decided to keep it bc after driving the wife's for a few weeks I became quite attached and liked comfortability and the the room. And with a newborn it's a lot easier getting a car seat out of an explorer than it is a cadillac cts lol. So I set out searching for a 3.5 ecoboost.. ( had to have comparable power to my car lol) i keep watching new ones on copart stolen recoveries. I may buy one of those in the future...

 

[unixadm]

So what is the point of having rear AC? Do yo have people riding in the back all of the time? Even during this summer in my 2015 PIU Ecoboost, I never had anyone complain about the temperature in the back using only the front AC. My vehicle does have the rear AUX AC though. However, most of the time I forget to turn it on, since in the PIU, the controls are only available to the front seat occupants. Since the PIU does not have a third row seating position, I'm not overly sure you'd need it.

Just trying to get you to think about the complexities of opening up the AC system if the system wasn't damaged in the collision.

I do love my 2015 PIU Ecoboost. Mine has 32k miles on it now and was a Ford QA fleet vehicle. It looks just like yours.

 

[Kikinz24]

I want the rear a.c. bc I have a newborn and I always take my dog with us places I don't want the back getting warm. I had to open the system up anyhow to fix the upper rail I had to pull the radiator and condenser out of my way. And the parts car wasn't wrecked it was a flood vehicle and all the components work all the lines are there. I've noticed in the back of my wife's it gets a bit warm esp on a hot day it takes a while just to cool the entire car down if the rear a.c. isn't on

 

[Kikinz24]

I want the rear a.c. bc I have a newborn and I always take my dog with us places I don't want the back getting warm. I had to open the system up anyhow to fix the upper rail I had to pull the radiator and condenser out of my way. And the parts car wasn't wrecked it was a flood vehicle and all the components work all the lines are there. I've noticed in the back of my wife's it gets a bit warm esp on a hot day it takes a while just to cool the entire car down if the rear a.c. isn't on

 

[unixadm]

I'd be checking to ensure there are no differences in the harnesses between the 14 and 15, especially since they have different powertrains. I'd also check to see if there is a difference in the main AC compressor and/or condenser if the vehicle has AUX AC. There could be changes to the orifice tubes, fan control, etc. as well. It will also change the weight of the charge to put into the system after the drier is replaced and it's pulled down, so if you need the specs from a 15 Ecoboost with rear AC, I can send you a picture of the sticker on my PIU. I'd replace all O-rings and seals within the system and leave it under vacuum for a good bit of time to ensure you don't have any leaks. As others mentioned, you'll have BCM and possibly needing to replace/reprogram the HVAC controller.

What I'd do first is to lay in the base non-refrigerant components of the system and see if I can get the vehicle to recognize and control those components. If so, I'd proceed with the refrigerant side of the system. It would suck to go through all of that work and dressing in all of the piping/parts/harnesses, only to find out you cannot enable proper control or enablement of the system. Do as much of that as you can on a bench or with the parts loosely arranged in the vehicle. Since you can always revert the programming using the AS-Built data, the risk to undoing the programming changes is minimal.

 

[Kikinz24]

Yes if you could get me your information from yours that would be great I can pull the as built data and compare the fcim. I have all the lines from bit h vehicles and I'll get the compressor numbers later. I planned on connecting the electrical part first and if I .can get it working the .move onto the lines. I've done collision and body work for years now and have a.c. recovery machine and all to work the system. So I know that aspect of it. Just learning about the wiring and asubuilt pc items now and how to change them in the computer

 

[unixadm]

PM me when you're ready for the information. I'll give you the VIN of my vehicle. I didn't realize your prior experience but you should be able to use my VIN to determine the differences in module programming. It's the extensiveness of the body harness that I'm concerned about between an XLT civilian model and the PIU.

 

[MehariB]

PM me when you're ready for the information. I'll give you the VIN of my vehicle. I didn't realize your prior experience but you should be able to use my VIN to determine the differences in module programming. It's the extensiveness of the body harness that I'm concerned about between an XLT civilian model and the PIU.

Hey! I know this thread is 4 years old but y’all killed it right when it was getting good, how did it turn out?

 

[peterk9]

Hey! I know this thread is 4 years old but y’all killed it right when it was getting good, how did it turn out?

Welcome to the Forum.
The thread may be old but most of the members are still current.

Peter

 

[MehariB]

Welcome to the Forum.
The thread may be old but most of the members are still current.

Peter

Thanks Peter! I’ve seen you literally on almost every single piu/pis thread, pleased to meet you!