BigToe wrote:
Thank you Glen (SoCal) for your informatively detailed insights on living with your new to you medium duty truck.
And thank you Wes, for connecting the dots on a good take away lesson... which amounts to checking the heater plenums to extract all of the leaf debris, in the cases where the vehicle's HVAC fan resistors are exposed to such debris.
Ugh. Not a job I look forward to.
BigToe,
The job isn't necessarily as bad as it could be. On my Mazda/Ranger, I believe I cleaned the plenum by simply removing a few screws holding the heater motor in place on the firewall and vacuuming debris out through the gaping mounting hole. A quick peek reveals that my Excursion (same as F-250) heater motor is mounted the same way. If I remember, the Impala was a lot more difficult, requiring me to remove a failed heater motor from under the crowded dash. That was Ugh.
A field mouse entered my dear wife's Prius heater plenum by sneaking in through the recirculation vent (I assume). The outside intake grills are fairly critter-tight, but not seed-tight without actual foam (think RV A/C cabin intake, same). During an oil change, the Toyota dealer found the nest when he checked the cabin filter which was chewed into a nice fleecy fuzz suitable for babies.
OTOH, one fall a tree squirrel built a nest under my Excursions hood judging from the size of sticks used. Unfortunately he also chewed a hole midway in the side of my brand new battery (ick), and several vacuum lines. I only found the nest after a couple of short trips and it suddenly didn't start at all... dead, leaky battery. They wouldn't warranty the still-new battery but they did smile. I suppose I could have tarred it up like the old days and refilled the acid. :)
Wes
...
