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sparkydave
Jedi Knight
Offline
My wife let me know last week that her Subaru's blower motor was making strange noises. She would turn it on high, and hear strange rustling noises. Yesterday it needed an oil change, so I offered to check it out after changing the oil. Big mistake.
First surprise is that the rodent found its way into the ventilation air intake, and ran into the cabin air filter. Who would have guessed that the paper cabin air filter makes good nesting material? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/eek.gif Completely shredded it. Once the rodent shredded it, it conveniently landed in the blower fan (squirrel/mouse cage blower?), along with whatever leaves it had caught. Fortunately, it doesn't look like it was there for very long, but made a nice nest there. My guess is he didn't like the rapidly rotating nesting place.
But it gets better. Apparently Subaru messed up on the design of the cabin air filter access, so instead of merely removing the shelf in the glove box to get to it as they had intended, you have to take the whole inside of the glovebox out. In order to do that, you first have to take the center console out, so that you can remove the trim around the gearshift, so that you can get to the screws that hold the side of the console on, so that you can unhook it from the lower dash piece, so that you can take the lower dash out just to get to the air filter. Oh yeah, and the genuine Subaru filter costs $80. Apparently other Subaru owners have just taken 3M furnace filters and cut them to fit in the filter tray instead, and Subaru actually came out with a retrofit kit where they cut a hole in the back of the glove box to get to the air filter housing, and they give you a panel with a couple of screws to cover it. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazyeyes.gif
I guess the bright side is at least it didn't shred wires along the way, or find its way into the engine air intake. Shredding the engine air filter might have had much worse results.
Today's project will be a trip to Home Depot for some mouse traps and furnace filters.
First surprise is that the rodent found its way into the ventilation air intake, and ran into the cabin air filter. Who would have guessed that the paper cabin air filter makes good nesting material? /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/eek.gif Completely shredded it. Once the rodent shredded it, it conveniently landed in the blower fan (squirrel/mouse cage blower?), along with whatever leaves it had caught. Fortunately, it doesn't look like it was there for very long, but made a nice nest there. My guess is he didn't like the rapidly rotating nesting place.
But it gets better. Apparently Subaru messed up on the design of the cabin air filter access, so instead of merely removing the shelf in the glove box to get to it as they had intended, you have to take the whole inside of the glovebox out. In order to do that, you first have to take the center console out, so that you can remove the trim around the gearshift, so that you can get to the screws that hold the side of the console on, so that you can unhook it from the lower dash piece, so that you can take the lower dash out just to get to the air filter. Oh yeah, and the genuine Subaru filter costs $80. Apparently other Subaru owners have just taken 3M furnace filters and cut them to fit in the filter tray instead, and Subaru actually came out with a retrofit kit where they cut a hole in the back of the glove box to get to the air filter housing, and they give you a panel with a couple of screws to cover it. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazyeyes.gif
I guess the bright side is at least it didn't shred wires along the way, or find its way into the engine air intake. Shredding the engine air filter might have had much worse results.
Today's project will be a trip to Home Depot for some mouse traps and furnace filters.
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