I have a problem with my recirculation not working...I did some research and one of the posts here said the most likely culprit was the climate control module, that the buttons on them wear out.

I don't think that's my problem here. I have the button pushed in to the "on" position, and when I start the car the led light will turn on and go out after a few seconds. Later on when I'm driving, the light will come back on for a few seconds and then turn back off. This will keep happening randomly.

The thing is, even when the light is on the recirculation isn't actually on. You know how you can hear when the recirculation comes on when you press the button? That's not happening. I thought it might be the door motor actuator but unless there was a switch on the motor that sent a signal to the climate control module telling it when the flap is open or closed, it wouldn't explain why the light keeps coming on and off.

Can anyone shed some light on the subject? Thanks!

 

The light in the button just means that that button has been pressed. It is mainly a nighttime convenience thing. It has no bearing on whatever the function that button is for.

What needs to be determined is whether the motor that opens/closes a door for recirculate is working. Is the control panel sending power to the motor? Is the motor working?

It is interesting that you are having problems with this and the blower motor, which happen to be located very close to each other.

Need to know what year your car is and if you have auto climate controls or manual.

 

Well the light coming on does indeed let me know that the button is pushed in...I want to know that the climate control module knows that the button is pushed in, so that would rule out the buttons on the module being worn out like another thread had mentioned. But the way it comes on and off worries me, like maybe the button has a short in it.

I have manual climate control in a 2000 model year.

So the recirculation door is around the same area as the blower motor? I'm going to do some digging around there, I hope there isn't some kind of water damage to that stuff. I've ordered a blower motor from Rock Auto and when it gets here I'll play around with it and see what I come up with.

 

Alright, I have an update. I posted another thread about my blower motor changing speeds when I accelerated...it was actually the recirculation turning on and then off, too fast for me to catch the light on the button.

If I am at a dead stop, and take my foot off the brake and press on the gas to go...the recirculation comes on, so the a/c gets louder. Then it turns back off.

Maybe a short in my module?

 

The light in the button is not a light bulb, nor is it in the button. The light source is a plastic bar that runs sideways behind all the buttons. The bar is illuminated by a light bulb that serves as a light pipe and the bar has a "finger" pointing towards each of the buttons Think of the letter E with 6 fingers. It is not a powerful light. When you push a button in, the button becomes close enough so that the light can illuminate the button. It is a complicated mechanical process that Nissan designed that somehow works. As a result, seeing the light in the button has nothing to do with any electrical connection that button is supposed to make.

With the recirculate turning on and off by itself is a strange thing. I have no idea what the cause of this might be. An electrical short? maybe. My take is that something is loose, and is affected by the G-forces of starting and stopping. But it is just a guess. Take the controls out and see what you can see. Is the radio a Nissan radio? Maybe the wire harness was damaged/butchered when the radio was replaced.

 

If the light pipe turned on the light when a button was pushed in then my recirculation button would be lit up all the time when it is pushed in, and it is not. The light comes on when the recirculation is active, when I press on the accelerator in my case. I'll have to get behind the module like you said...there would have to be something almost swinging back there for it to do what it is doing.

 

So back to this...it was never solved.

I have been through the steps in the FSM, and there is continuity from the connector pins to the intake door motor and the pins on the climate control module. Everything checked out in the wiring between module and motor.

The FSM says NG climate control module. I have already replaced it once...so I replaced it again. The third unit does not work either.

I have tested the wires going to the module for the recirculation button and they're not getting the 12 volts they need...unless the engine is revved. Even sitting still in Park, it comes on and then goes right back off for about 1 second when the engine is revved. Doesn't stay on when I hold the gas down, only for just a second.

I see the door closing halfway then opening right back when it does this, and the light on the module comes on for a second too.

It must be a short, but I have no idea how on earth to find where that wire goes without ripping the whole dash apart.

I think its that individual wire for the recirculation, because everything else on the climate control works great.

I might splice some power from a good wire and just Jerry rig it that way. The AC sucks ***** without recirculation.

When I bought the car, it had the original radio in it and no other aftermarket devices had been installed that I could tell. The wires behind the module look perfect and so does the harness connector and pins.

Alternator is good, brand new AGM battery. Everything on the car works perfect except for this.

 

Hi Legionnaire1856. Sorry to hear you were still having this problem as of June 2022. Were you able to find a solution to this? Please let me know.

I hope you don't mind me hijacking this thread, but I have run into the exact same problem with the same vehicle (2000 Maxima w/ manual climate control). There are a handful of posts about it online (including the .org), but no solutions. For some, this might be a minor nuisance, but if you live in a hot climate this can limit your AC's efficacy. Therefore, I am going to make it my mission to try to solve this. If I can find a resolution, I will document it on this thread instead of creating a new thread.

I first noticed this problem sometime in 2020, and just assumed that the actuator motor burned out. I found a brand new OEM replacement (Nissan Part # 27730-2Y900 - ACTUATOR-AIR INTAKE BOX) from an eBay seller from the UAE. After I installed the new motor, it seemed to work just fine for about a year. Unfortunately, it stopped working again. It would only work sporadically, so I would just leave the Recirculate button pressed until it finally activated, which could be hours, days, or weeks later. Curiously, any time I wanted to disable the recirculation, it would immediately retract the blend door with no hesitation. Therefore, only the forward motion was not working. I let this go for a while and, just a few days ago, I finally took the glove box out so I can work on solving this.

My first assumption was that the new actuator motor had failed, and perhaps it might have been a counterfeit part. Upon taking the actuator motor out and tested it while plugged in, I found that it would only nudge forward slightly when Recirculation was activated, and I had to push the actuator lever to get it to move all the way. But, when I pressed the Recirculation button again to deactivate it, the motor retracted all the way without hesitation. The fault seems to be only with the forward motion. Upon noticing this, I opened the motor actuator housing to examine the insides. It contains a small electric motor and a series of plastic cog gears. It had plenty of grease and I did not see any faults (such as dirt or debris getting stuck in the gears, like I had suspected).

As a next step, and in lieu of spending almost $200 to buy another brand new OEM actuator motor, I went to a local junkyard and bought two (2) actuator motors from two different 2001 Nissan Maximas they had in the yard, both of which had manual climate controls. When I came home and installed one of the replacement actuators, I found that the first junkyard actuator had the exact same problem. Just to rule out the possibility of Murphy's law, I tried the second actuator. Sure enough, this one also had the same problem. Now I have come to the conclusion that the replacement actuators are (probably) not faulty; the fault lies somewhere else within the vehicle.

At this point, I am going to do some research and try to come up with a solution. I will report back on the reserved post below to report my findings when I am finished.

Do not mind all of the loose wires and junk on the passenger side; I am working on a few other unrelated projects as well. The dirt on the ground is from me cleaning out a ton of dirt and pine needles from inside the fender.

 

Update 10/29/2024 - I have read the Nissan FSM and found it has troubleshooting steps for exactly this issue. The first step Nissan recommends is to test the ground wire for continuity to ground. I did this with my voltage meter, and found it has continuity with minimal or no resistance (it fluctuates, but not high enough to suggest a faulty ground). The remaining steps suggest testing circuits between the motor's connector and the HVAC control unit. I would rather not take that out or apart right now, since I'm probably going to replace the stereo soon anyways. However, all of the remaining troubleshooting steps in the FSM suggest replacing the HVAC control unit. I could test this theory with a junkyard unit, but I am trying to track down a new OEM unit if possible. I will follow up at some point in the future when I test this theory.

SOLUTION FOUND (Post #18 in this thread).

 

My car was totaled about 5 months ago when an 80 year old man pulled out in front of me. I never found a solution to this problem, despite following the FSM troubleshooting steps perfectly. According to the FSM, I needed a new climate control module. I tried 2 other used modules and they both did the exact same thing as my original module. The ground was good, all the wiring was tested for continuity and was good. The motor itself was changed out and nothing got better. I had a brand new AGM battery, the original alternator, and when the original alternator went out I got a new one remanufactured by Hitachi themselves. No change. The Recirculation only came on for a brief second when I revved the engine just as it was coming off idle. It wouldn't work when the engine was revved up or running on the highway or at idle, just when I blipped the throttle from idle it would come on and go right off a second later.

I racked my brain for FIVE god damned years trying to figure this problem out. Poring over the FSM, throwing parts at it. Unless I had the terrible luck of having 3 bad climate control modules, the FSM diagnosis was wrong. If the modules were all indeed bad, that would mean other vehicles were having this same problem and I believe we would have heard of more people having this same problem. If your problem is just like mine, I'm sure you've come to realize that no one else on the entire internet has posted about this exact problem and it's up to you to figure it out. If the car hadn't been wrecked, I'm positive I still would not know what the problem was to this day.

The only true way to know would be to pay $450+ to buy a brand new climate control module from Nissan Parts Deal and to install it and see if it worked. The only thing I can possibly think happened is that there is some kind of connection in the recirculation button switch that arcs and makes connection briefly when the voltage jumps from revving the engine. The voltage regulator kicks in and brings the voltage down slightly and with the reduced voltage, the circuit in the button switch is broken again. It's possible it was just a weak point that burned out within the module over time.

If I were you, I would figure out a way to make a custom switch. Buy a cheap one off of Amazon, hook it to the 4 wires going to the recirculation motor, and bypass that piece of **** switch in the climate control module. You'll have to splice in 12v power from a hot wire into the aftermarket switch, but it's not that hard and it will be worth it. That was going to be my next step. It would literally HAVE to work. Use the FSM to identify a hot wire that you can draw current from and identify which wires are which for the recirculation motor. If you don't understand the circuit, I think there's a Reddit sub called Ask Electronics or something like that where you could ask them for help identifying how the motor runs off of 4 wires. I didn't understand it.

If you ever figure it out, post it here so I can finally know what the hell was going on with that thing.

 

Thank you for responding, Legionnaire1856. I am sorry to hear about your Maxima, that is unfortunate. But thank you for letting me know about your troubleshooting steps.

I tried to order a new OEM manual climate control from NissanPartsDeal.com. Yes, I was going to spend an exorbitant amount of money for it. The next day, I got an e-mail saying that they cancelled my order because they do not have any in stock. False advertising . I also checked Amayama.com, but they do not have one either. But, since you already tried replacing it and did not see any improvement, I will forego replacing the unit for now.

Since my last post, I have yet to do any additional troubleshooting. Unfortunately I am tied up with some other projects around the house at the moment. But I will get to this eventually and post a solution of some sort. I would hate to have to resort to creating a separate switch/circuit just to operate the re-circulation door motor. Hopefully there is some way to do this the right way.

 

I am getting ready to revisit this soon. Possibly in the next week or two, if not sooner. Hey Legionnaire1856, did you ever replace the Blower Motor and/or the Blower Motor Resistor while you owned your Maxima, or did it still have the factor blower motor and resistor?

In researching the diagram, I think there might be a connection between a failing Blower Motor Resistor and the climate control unit (seemingly) malfunctioning, perhaps like a built-in fail-safe mode (i.e. AC will not turn on if the fan is not blowing). But I should find out more once I start troubleshooting again soon. I will post an update soon.

 

Both resistor and blower are cheap on eBay.

 

Right, but I was wondering if you had ever replaced it on your Maxima?

I ordered OEM replacements for both the Resistor and the AC Relay (Yes, I am just throwing parts at it, at this point). ETA is 10/14/2025.

(Edit: I thought I was replying to Legionnaire1856; not sure why User1 chimed in here).

 

That's cool. They're cheap enough these days. I replaced both in mine. No issues.

 

First of all, I am sorry for those who might be following this forum in hopes of seeing a quick solution to this problem. I have been putting this off due to a myriad of personal issues and health problems I am currently dealing with. Nonetheless, I started testing the HVAC problems on my 00' Maxima a few days ago.

The current HVAC symptoms are:
-MAIN PROBLEM (Problem 1): Re-circulation Blend Door Does Not Open Upon Demand (Button Press); it opens gradually after being pressed, but will retract on demand.
-Problem 2: A/C function will not activate when HVAC button is pressed, if vehicle in park (intermittent problem; not consistent).
-Problem 3: Fan will not blow, unless set to highest setting "4" (probable Blower Motor Resistor failure).

-NEW ISSUE: On a possibly related note, I noticed that the vehicle's left turn signal indicator light now causes the Illumination circuit to illuminate when it is supposed to be off (during daytime driving). It's just the left turn signal. The right-hand signal does not cause this. I am beginning to suspect some kind of ground issue that is worsening over time, but this apparent short circuit could be unrelated.

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On October 16, 2025, I started by removing the glove box. I replaced the Blower Motor Resistor. The resistor was held in with two screws. One screw appears to not be original to the vehicle, suggesting prior replacement, but this is uncertain. The enclosed pictures show the failed resistor and the replacement, side by side. It should be obvious which is which. I reinserted the new resistor and reconnected it without incident. This immediately and successfully resolved Problem 3 (fan not working, except on highest setting). However, this did not affect Problem 1 (re-circulation door hesitation) nor Problem 2 (A/C activation delay after button press). I specifically tested for both upon replacing the resistor.

Admittedly, I was hoping this would be a silver bullet solution for all problems, but the resistor failure was probably just coincidental while the other problems were ongoing.

Following the successful resistor replacement, I turned the engine off and replaced the electrical relay for the Air Conditioner. A side-by-side comparison of the old and replacement unit is enclosed to this post. The old relay did not have any obvious problems, aside from discoloration (likely due to age), and I could feel something shaking internally when I shook the old unit in my hand. The replacement unit had no such shake. Unfortunately, upon inserting the new relay, the A/C delay did not resolve. This indicates the replaced relay was not faulty, thus ruling out theory of possible intermittent malfunction of the relay.

My next steps will include removing the HVAC unit and testing ground connections, as well as visually inspecting the ground connection(s) for the HVAC control unit circuits. Move to come. No ETA at this time.

 

Again, I apologize for how slow my progress has been. I do not have a lot of free time, but I am still working on it.

I have removed the stereo and HVAC control unit, and will begin testing soon. I have a junkyard HVAC unit to use for testing.

Also, I have confirmed that the left-turn signal causing the dashboard illumination is a separate issue, unrelated to the HVAC difficulties. I traced the fault to the illumination dimmer switch (Part # 25980-0L000). I replaced it with a junkyard dimmer switch, which resolved the blinker issue.

Edit: blinker issue returned shortly thereafter; this fault was likely caused by the faulty battery ground (see post #18).

 

After months of on-and-off troubleshooting, I believe I have resolved the problem, and it was not what I expected. However, I made the error of performing multiple "fixes" at the same time, so I am unsure which one fixed the HVAC (recirculation and AC hesitation) issue. As I have noted in this thread, multiple unrelated electrical gremlins began to occur, usually one after another. I assumed this was due to either a failing car battery and/or the vehicle's electronics failing due to age. Neither appear to be the case.

October 2025: I replaced the car battery with an Interstate battery from Costco. The old battery was a cheap brand and I do not recommend it. The new battery offered a negligible improvement, but did not resolve the issue(s).

January 2026: I removed the stereo and HVAC system to begin more complex testing and troubleshooting. I also began to observe multiple minor electrical faults, such as the dash board randomly dimming when one of the turn signals were on, the driver side window not working, courtesy lights flickering, etc.

February 2026: The starter motor failed (last replaced in early 2011). I replaced the motor. During that process, I took out the air box and noticed that the battery's ground cable (where it connects to the chassis) was very dirty and corroded. On a hunch, I bought some brass cleaner (Brasso, 8oz; about $5 on Amazon) and steel wool and meticulously cleaned the brass connector and the part of the chassis that it grounds to. I also replaced the battery's negative terminal because it felt loose. I also cleaned up some of the electrical grounds in the engine bay and inside the cabin, under the dash.

At about the same time, I took apart the HVAC control unit to replace the interior lights (the LEDs I last used in 2011 caused hotspotting, so I wanted to use this opportunity to fix that). In doing so, I noticed that the connector to the fan control had heat/burn damage! (see enclosed pics). The pin where the damage occurred connects to the wire that sends power when the fan speed is set to "4" (to bypass the blower motor resistor). I have no idea how that happened. Nonetheless, I used the same brass cleaner and cleaned those connections out. I also swapped out the fan switch (not the whole HVAC unit) for one of the junkyard units, just for good measure.

March 2026: Once I got the new motor in and reassembled the air box, and reinstalled the HVAC unit, I found that all of the issues were completely resolved! No more electrical gremlins, no more flickering/dimming lights on the dash, no more AC hesitating to engage and, most importantly, the Recirculation motor now works without hesitation. Moreover, the battery no longer goes dead after just 2-3 days of no driving.

PROBABLE SOLUTION:
Unfortunately, I didn't think to document and test each part of this process, so I am unsure which step actually fixed the issue. However, I would bet that cleaning the battery ground/chassis cable likely fixed the electrical (and HVAC) issues. Apparently a bad battery ground connection can cause all of these issues, and supposedly can also cause the battery to drain/discharge rapidly (something about amperage and higher resistance, from what I read). If anyone in the future has this problem, I recommend to start with cleaning/repairing the main ground with brass cleaner. It's an easy $5 solution that can be done in one afternoon.