Cleaning Your Interior Fan Unit
By: Bob_98SR5
Date: 1/25/04

Disclaimer
I am providing this write up for illustrative purposes only. Perform at your own risk. Any mods (including this one) you perform on your vehicle is your responsibility. Commercial use of this write up will result in legal action as well as the undying scorn from members of the online Toyota 4Runner community. You've been warned.

Summary
After a recent trip up to the San Francisco Bay Area, I noticed a "ticking" noise which came from the passenger side. The sound increased when I turned up the heater so I knew it was related to the operation of the heater and the AC unit. I posted my question on Yotatech.com here and as always, it was correctly diagnosed.

Though this repair job was performed to correct the ticking sound, it might not be bad idea to clean this unit especially if you have allergies. The amount of caked on dust was pretty eye-opening. And this maintenance item will only take an hour of your time.


Step 1: Removing the Glove Box
To remove the glove box, unscrew the two philips head screws. Lift out the glove both to remove. Then, use a 10mm socket to remove the bottom support bar. You may want to remove the bottom kick panel for some more handspace too.

Step 2: Removing the Fan Unit
Space is tight and you might need to do some Olympic gymnast moves to remove this, but its do-able. Take your cordless drill with the #25 torx bit and unscrew the three torx bits. The fan unit should just simply fall out:

Here you can see why its necessary to use a flexible shaft on your drill		Remove torx bits (T)

To completely remove the fan unit, unplug the black harness attached to it. It took awhile for me to get that one off.

Step 3: Cleaning the Unit
It was clears as day that there were twigs and leaves that had blown in there. It was simple to remove them. But as you can see, the amount of caked on dirt on the fan blades was pretty disgusting. The best way to hold the unit upside down over your sink to avoid any water getting into the fan unit itself. Then clean the fan unit with a brush dipped in mild, soapy water. Here are some larger pictures to illustrate clean vs. dirty:

Dirty		Clean

Install everything back in reverse order.

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