As promised, a how-to guide to remove a faulty V68 flap without having to dismantle the whole dash:
- first, remove the A pillar bottom trim. It doesn't need to be removed as long as the top bit is loose so you can access the glovebox screw closest to the passenger door, but I recommend you remove it in order to avoid any damage to the trim.
- remove the glovebox, five screws in total. The three middle ones are quite tricky if you are using a regular screwdriver as the glovebox door sits in the way. All of them are T25 if I'm not mistaken.
- Disconnect the glovebox light switch and out comes the box.
- You then need to remove the plastic air duct, one T25 screw and one Phillips screw. It's quite tight but the duct should come out easily.
- Remover the blue connectors from both the V107 and V68 motors
- Undo the two clips and pull the bracket with both motors out.
- Put the new motor in and ideally, make sure that the new motor is the lowest position. I know there is a specialist VAG tool out there, but just connect both motors again, turn on the ignition and put the aircon on the LOW setting. You will see the gear wheel move.
- Now comes the trickiest bit: aligning the gear wheel and the lever. Only the latter can be moved by hand, but if the gear wheel is in the position as mentioned above, it should not be too difficult to properly align it with the lever.
- Put the bracket back and plug both connectors back in. Turn on the engine and check whether the aircon is properly working. In my case, as the car was suffering from a blocked flap positioning motor, I knew that as soon as cold air was coming out with the aircon on LOW, I had fixed the issue. Changing the temperature on the aircon panel changed the temperature coming out of the vents.
- I would suggest letting the engine run for a bit and adjusting the temperature to make sure everything works as it should. If you have a colour DIS or VCDS, you should be able to clear to fault code now - and it shouldn't come back.
- Put the glove box back and finally the lower A pillar trim.
All in all, it took me about an hour to do this.