Noise from air vent..covered under warranty?

[mphamd]

Hi all,

I took my car into the dealer recently to check on a vibration noise that gets louder as I turn up the speed of my air vents. They told me it was because I had leaves blocking the air blower motor that is situated behind the in-cabin filter in the glove compartment. Is this something that you guys have experienced and what did you do to fix it? I have the in-cabin filter at home to install myself but the leaves the dealer is talking about is that easy to get out?

Thanks

 

[mikec]

The blower squirrel-cage fan is directly below the cabin air filter.

Genesis cabin air flow is:
* air inlet scoops
* various inside-dash ducts to the cabin air filter (top side of filter)
* fan below filter sucks in the air
* fan outlet faces sideways, towards center stack of interior.

If leaves are "in the blower" area then the filter was missing. What I'd do:
Open the glove box, remove the black plastic stops along the sides so the whole box hangs fully open, and remove the cabin air filter. The owners manual has instructions on this... when removing those stops just make sure you don't have the glove box 100% open - having ANY force on the stops makes them a million times harder to remove for some reason. Other folks have posted tricks on removing them. With the filter out, use a small mirror on a stick (dental inspection mirror if you have one, or those small mirrors on telescoping wands many plumbers/electricians/etc. have - they're cheap at Home Depot or Harbor Freight Tools) and a flash light to look inwards and downwards at the fan. If you have a vacuum with a long skinny hose/want, just stuff it in there and suck up whatever you can.

Removing the blower assembly is not a trivial task. Go to www.hmaservice.com and register, then you can view (and print to PDF files) copies of the factory service manual for your car. (sedans are series/model "BH") including the heating/ventilation/air conditioning one. The basic steps are:
* remove the "crush pad" (lower part of the dash)
* remove a cross bar (crash survival stuff)
* remove the heater assembly + blower assembly as one big unit. Which probably means draining the engine coolant first. Since the air conditioner condensor is just above the heater core, it may also have to be removed. I'm going from memory here, I haven't read all the "see section blah blah blah for the details of each step.
* Undo a couple fasteners to separate the blower assembly from the heater assembly.

mike c.