Re-felt Ford F350 Vent Dampers

I had the Dash of my 1999 Ford F-350 off to do some troubleshooting of the heater controls and saw these little plastic damper (shut off's) in the dash panel vent tubes. The foam on the edges, which does the sealing to the vent tubes, was old and falling apart. So I pulled them out, found some felt weather stripping at the hardware store and fixed them.

This should be roughly the same for the Ford F150, F250 pickups, and maybe the E150-E250-E350 Vans of the 1999-2006 vintage. This may also work for later vehicles if Ford used a similar damper part.

A $4 roll of 3/16" thick Felt Weather seal.
Maybe some glue

To remove these dampers, you have to take the dash off.

You have to pull out the radio first. Using two special DIN radio removal tools which you can get at an auto parts store. I tried the coat hanger trick (as seen on youtube), but that didn't work on my radio, so I got the special tools ($7) and the radio came right out.

On the left end of the dash, take off the end panel with a screw driver, there are 3 or 4 push retainers, and it pops right off. Then take off the headlight control panel. It's a little tricky but if you carefully pry at the middle top and bottom it will come out. Then you undo the 2 screws at the top of the radio opening.

Start on the left edge over by the headlight switch and pull the dash away from the dash frame. Its held in place by metal spring retainers, so you just have to pop it all loose.

Then undo the electrical connectors to the 4x4 switch (if you have 4WD), and the power outlet. Then you can take the dash outside of the truck.

I found this felt weather stripping at my local Ace hardware. Its just plain felt no adhesive, about 3/16" thick and 1/2" wide.

The vent dampers come out with the dash. You push them sideways towards the lever side and get the pivot free and they come out of the back of the dash.

Then I cut the felt to be about 1/4" longer (1/8" on each end) than the damper plastic. So the ends seal also.

Clean out the gap in the damper part. Get all the old foam out.

You can just push the felt into the cleaned out gap of the damper. A small screw driver might help. I didn't glue the felt in when I wrote this, but I might put a little on the felt and redo them so that the felt is held in place better.

Once the felt is in, and the glue is dry (if you did that), you can align each damper arm with the control horn in the dash vents and pop them back into place. The put the wire connections back onto the switches and 12 vdc outlet and then pop the dash back in place. Put in the 2 screws at the top of the radio opening. Push the radio back in. Push the headlight switch assembly back in. and put the left dash end piece back on.

And you are done!