Heat would only blow out of my passenger side vents when the AC was on. I took to the internet to save the day. I saw forums online of people complaining that their heat would blow out of the driver side and air conditioning would blow out of the passenger side often accompanied with a clicking sound and the usual suggestion was to replace the heat blend actuator. Even though mine had no clicking sound I thought it was worth the shot for a $20 part. I found that replacing the heat blend actuator was the fix. Symptoms don't have to match exactly to be the correct fix.
Switching the passenger side heat blend actuator is a bitch. The one for the driver side isn't bad at all but wouldn't you know it that it was my passenger side that needed replacing.
Here are some overall instructions
They aren't very specific or helpful but can help you wrap your head around a diagnosis. I also found a schematic for underneath the dashboard section PDF but didn't bookmark it and lost the link.
Essentially I started by replacing the driver side actuator since it is right behind the glove box. This took all of 10 minutes and as I had suspected when I tested the AC on full blast the heat still blew from the passenger side. I was going to have to replace the passenger side one.
This video will show you how to replace the driver side:
The tricky part for the passenger side is removing the part.
Here is a link to an image labelled with the part names
In this video of changing one out in an Explorer which is very similar to changing the Taurus
He suggests pushing the part up after past the wiring harness after removing the screws to disconnect the wiring. This didn't work for me. I had to wiggle it for what seemed like 2 hours until I was able to view the connecting wiring from the bottom of the wiring harness. Then I was able to disconnect it and pull it free.
I gave up on trying to put both screws back after replacing with the new actuator. It has worked for a month so far by just screwing in the one easy to get to screw.
Drunk proof it by having a handy dandy magnetic screwdriver.
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