B3A00: Air Conditioning Refrigerant Distribution Valve Actuator C Stuck/Open
Single source — subject not independently confirmed
Most codes here are written only once two independent sources agree on what they mean. This one rests on a single source, checked against the codes around it — its family, its block and its neighbours all fit. That makes the subject below likely rather than established, so we have deliberately left out the severity rating, the repair advice and the likely-causes list that a confirmed code carries.
If you have met this code on a real car, what you know is worth more than what we have — please post it below.
What this code means
A refrigerant distribution valve routes refrigerant between the branches of the air conditioning circuit. Valves C and D are the third and fourth of them, which places this code on a vehicle whose circuit serves several destinations at once — typically an electric or hybrid car, where the same refrigerant cools the cabin, chills the traction battery through a heat exchanger, and on a heat-pump vehicle warms the cabin by running backwards. The corpus documents confirmed members of this family at P0EC9 and P2611.
This code reports a mechanical outcome rather than an electrical one: the command was sent and the valve did not move. No electrical test can see that, which is why the standard gives it a separate number from the circuit faults beside it.
Components involved
Information, not instruction
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Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Community experience
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What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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