When I bought my truck, it looked like a dust storm had blown through for a month and they had left the windows open. Every time I take of a panel or work on something, I spend about half the time just cleaning the dust off the back side of the panels.
Along those lines, there is probably a pound or more of dust throughout the HVAC system. I've done a bit, like pulling and cleaning the vents and running a damp paper towel connected to a coat hanger through what I could, but that only goes so far.
Now that it's getting a bit colder and I'm having to use the heat, the dust smell is worse than before and showing up to work covered in dust isn't fun. I assumed that it would slowly blow out, but I've had the truck for about 4 months with only a little bit coming out.
Anyone have suggestions or tricks they've used to clean the HVAC vents? It's not bad enough (yet) for me to pull the entire dash out and I may do that at some point, but was hoping there was a much less involved trick someone's found.
-Rob
Back-feed the vents with a leaf blower?
Can you pull the blower and vacuum out the housing?
There is a cabin filter and I replaced it a few days after getting the truck. 130k miles and I think it was the original one. I haven't pulled the blower yet, but will do that when I have some free time and clean as much around and it and as far as I can reach. Hadn't thought about the leaf blower idea, but I'd be concerned about blowing out a seal or damaging the controls.
-Rob
Do you have an air compressor and a big shop vac? When they cleaned the ducts in my house they put a giant shop vac connected in one end of the duct work and then fed an air line with a multi-whip nozzle in the other end. The air pressure whips the small hoses around which dislodges dust and the shop vac sucks it out. I feel like you could come up with a homebrew version of that to clean dust out of a car system. Just make sure not to try to force the air hose past the heater core or a/c evaporator.
The multi-whip nozzle looked like this:
Looks like you can buy them for about $60 but I wonder if you could make one, too.
I turned on the vents in the Terrible Truck and was blasted with debris.
I'm following this topic for ideas, but I think I'm going to have to take the system apart and clean it.
Road trip with the windows wide open and the heater absolutely blasting away?
Train a small mammal, say a mouse, to use a miniature feather duster. Insert him into the duct system. Let him work for a bit. Reward with a small piece of cheese. Win-win.
