Talk about bad timing, I'm getting ready to take a three-week road trip and now I just noticed that the vent fan is making a thrumming sound. It's as if there is something real close to, but not touching the fan blade. It gets louder if the system is set to recirculate, as when the **** it set to Max A/C.

Can anyone tell me if the fan is hard to remove? I'm hoping that the problem will be something easy to spot and simple to fix.

 

I had leaves in mine, and a pile blocking the lower half of the evaporator. Took off the plastic panels and vacuum reservoir, 3 hex headed screws, one connector, and the blower was out. Used a shop vac to clean out the recess, along with a popsicle stick to poke things loose. You may have piles of leaves being sucked into the plenum from the chamber directly behind the firewall. The drains are not very big as far as allowing leaves to get out. Mine were mostly the one-winged seeds of a maple tree, I think. Just glad I got to it before they started to sprout...
tom

 

Thanks, Tom, I wish mine had been so simple. What could have been a 10 minute job, turned into a 2 hour ordeal.

There wasn't enough room to pull out the fan without also removing the cruise control. Then I had to remove the coolant reservoir/washer fluid container, which itself couldn't be unbolted without removing the engine air filter housing (which trapped one of the fasteners). The rubber grommets holding in the filter housing were designed to only travel in one direction (not out, unfortunately), and I had to literally use a crow bar to get that out. Only then I could finally get at the fasteners that attached reservoir.

The electrical connectors alone were maddening (fan motor, cruise control, heater temp sensor, A/C control, washer pump). Every single one I had to disconnect has a different locking mechanism. I never did figure out how to disconnect the "mission critical" windshield washer pump, and the heat sensor had a locking clip right next to the fender liner and so couldn't be accessed without also removing the liner. The designer for those should be taken out & shot.

So I finally got the fan out. And found one leaf. All that noise from one stinking leaf. Needless to say, I won't be parking under the eucalyptus tree again...