A cautionary tale
Last Thursday I had my second automotive appointment in a month. The first concentrated on the neglected brakes ($$$fricken fracken$$$) but left this funny swish-swoosh sound unimpeded.
Then (belatedly) I began to get analytical, and observed that the funny noises were present only when the blower was running. During vacation, the floor-level vents began leaking onto the driver and passenger, which was a pretty good hint something was wrong. The service folk made dire predictions when I made the appointment, but lo! Instead of an $800 repair job, I had an $88 bill for removing an impacted mass of vegetable matter from the blower intake.
And where does this come from, you ask? From the trees. Your cabin blower sucks air inside through that funky set of vents that lives just below your windshield wipers, and that you can see only when you open the hood. It collects leaves, dead flowers, and all the vegetable crap that mother nature drops on cars. The prolonged sucking of the blower intake (as in the six weeks we spent without sunshine from late May to mid-July) turns those leaves et al. into a fine matter that gets sucked in along with the air, until the blower's internal filter stops it. Eventually there is enough of this crud built up to stop the movement of moisture. Condensation follows, then swish -swoosh sounds (I love auto tech talk, don't you?), then foot baths for the front seat passengers. In the worst case, enough water builds up to destroy the blower motor. I was lucky. The crud dam kept the excess water out of the blower.
The bad news: auto ventilation systems hold onto nasty odours for a long time. Although I got a miss on serious problems, my ventilation now blows air that smells exactly like compost. I'm working through the list of popular interweb fixes, and counting my blessings: some people have found this problem to be caused by small animals that crawled in there and died.
So pilgrims, clear nature's vegetables off your air intakes regularly, and (I guess) employ a cat to live under your car to keep the rats and mice out of the AC and the hoses.
Then (belatedly) I began to get analytical, and observed that the funny noises were present only when the blower was running. During vacation, the floor-level vents began leaking onto the driver and passenger, which was a pretty good hint something was wrong. The service folk made dire predictions when I made the appointment, but lo! Instead of an $800 repair job, I had an $88 bill for removing an impacted mass of vegetable matter from the blower intake.
And where does this come from, you ask? From the trees. Your cabin blower sucks air inside through that funky set of vents that lives just below your windshield wipers, and that you can see only when you open the hood. It collects leaves, dead flowers, and all the vegetable crap that mother nature drops on cars. The prolonged sucking of the blower intake (as in the six weeks we spent without sunshine from late May to mid-July) turns those leaves et al. into a fine matter that gets sucked in along with the air, until the blower's internal filter stops it. Eventually there is enough of this crud built up to stop the movement of moisture. Condensation follows, then swish -swoosh sounds (I love auto tech talk, don't you?), then foot baths for the front seat passengers. In the worst case, enough water builds up to destroy the blower motor. I was lucky. The crud dam kept the excess water out of the blower.
The bad news: auto ventilation systems hold onto nasty odours for a long time. Although I got a miss on serious problems, my ventilation now blows air that smells exactly like compost. I'm working through the list of popular interweb fixes, and counting my blessings: some people have found this problem to be caused by small animals that crawled in there and died.
So pilgrims, clear nature's vegetables off your air intakes regularly, and (I guess) employ a cat to live under your car to keep the rats and mice out of the AC and the hoses.
Labels: auto maintenance
posted by Uncle | 23:42
1 Comments:
The latest score is compost 2, fixes 1. The tricks of using an air duster to clean the intakes, and a strong household cleaner to kill the smell, have reduced the smell but not removed it. Ayuh, makes me think of home. I believe vinegar is next.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home