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Recently, i've been noticing that when I turn on my vent in my truck, I hear what sounds to be leaves rustling around and then settling down. Yesterday I took my blower motor out and look at what I found!!
Sure enough, leaves...and a WHOLE lot more...
I started vacuuming them out, and then I whipped out my air hose and attacked that too. Turns out, I had a whole bunch of refuse clogging up my air box where the AC dryer hangs. We're talking pine needles, plastic wrappers, leaves, rocks, sand, dirt, sticks, bark...you name it, I had it in there. So then I noticed that the air box continues deeper into the cab, and I noticed all this crap:
You can barely make it out in that picture, but it was FULL of the same crap I just got done pulling out of front part of the box.
This is what my arm looked like after I first got in there and blew it out with the air hose:
Now here's my question. After spending about an hour picking things out, blowing the air hose around, and vacuuming up what I could, I discovered that the air box feels like it goes down and there's a drainage area for stuff like this to come out.
If I had to draw it for you and if we're looking into the box from the blower motor hole, from what I could feel in there...the box would look something like this: (please forgive my crude Microsoft Paint drawing)
Basically where it comes to a V at the bottom is where all of the dirt, sand, mud, leaves and twigs were all staying. I can feel that V go deeper, so what i'm wondering is if there is indeed a drain hole down there that may be plugged up. If there is, i'd like to get all of this crap out of there that I can before it starts to cause problems or rust things.
Maybe Luke76 can shed some light on this, since he took his air box completely apart and restored it like a champ!
If you are talking about the area on the passenger side which can be accessed once the blower assembly is removed, then here is what you can do...
Inside the cab on the passenger side [same for drivers side], remove the kick panel and you will see a cover plate. This plate is at the bottom of the "V" you have drawn. On non-A/C trucks, this cover plate is not there and there is a different kick panel with slots for allowing outside air to enter. On the panel, there is a slide which opens and closes this vent.
Once the cover plate is removed, the debris can easily be removed.
A neat upgrade is to retrofit a factory A/C equipped truck with the old vents. These are very nice for cool days and allow much air without the noise of having the windows open.
I used to have a 1982 F250, and I found out that that was the last year they fit those vent kick panels in these trucks. From what I could tell, the air came in from this rubber piece attached to the cab (i've highlighted it in white):
Do you know if the 83 and up trucks are able to use those vent kick panels?
To my knowledge, any 80+ truck without A/C has vented kick panels; factory-installed A/C included non-vented kick panels but the same body channels exist regardless.
This kind of story about leaves & debris in the heater box is a regular feature here, lots of 'em in he archives (sometimes people discover this stuff after it catches on fire from the blower fan motor resistor, also located in that box).
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