Help! Mountaineer you can freeze in and roast in

[Echo2Zs]

I am a newbie, so please forgive me if I make unintended errors in etiquette here.
I have a 97 Mountaineer w a 5.0 L engine. It has a whopping 172,00 on it and seems to be running pretty well, when I can afford gas to get it out of the driveway, that is.
Here is my issue neither the heat nor the a/c works. The fan blows strong, no issue there. A mechanic looked at it briefly and proceeded to break a hose and sprayed and dumped my water/coolant mixture around. He didn't feel like he had any answers without taking out the dash and fixed what broke.
I have ten month old twins that had to ride around in this truck as newborns with no heat and then during the summer with no a/c. I am hoping I can spare them the deep freeze this winter in the truck here in New England.
FYI, I am a single mom and not anywhere near able to be my own mechanic nor pay one more than a pittance. I might be able to find someone to help me, or at least have a chance at not being ripped off or having my time wasted by a mechanic if I should come into a few hundred dollars by some miracle.
Thanks for your time and for any replies.

 

[11lariat]

the issue you're having sounds like the blend door..which unfortunately isn't an easy or cheap fix. there are a few stickies about this and some of the possible fixes if you search around (stickies are located at the top of the list of threads). Good luck!

 

[my98nnj]

Did your mechanic fix the hose he broke or did he simply bypass the heater core?
You definately need to have the truck looked at by another mechanic to find out why you have no heat. The A/C issue could be simply low refrigerent. I think it would be much more important to fix the heat at this point and perhaps deal with the a/c next summer.

The blend door issue which the above poster mentioned might not be your issue right now, however you could have that commom problem with your truck as well. Once you get the heat actually working, if you can not control the temperature of the air coming in (either full hot or only max a/c cools) then you indeed have a blend door issue, but you should still get hot heat.