2002 Avalon .. Cabin Air inlet admitting leaves & debris ??

[Young Pete]

Hello all. Have been a member since 2016, but this is my first post here.

2002 Avalon Sorrento .. When the AirCon fan is set to OUTSIDE air, does anybody know where the fan DRAWS its air from ?

Early Nov '24, my wife reported a vibration in the cabin air fan (heater/aircon fan). So I whipped the glovebox out and stuck a mirror up there and found that the cylindrical fan rotor was chokka-blok full of leaves .. gum leaves (we are in rural Qld).

I thought, "OK, she's a 22 year old car, so I can accept that it's taken 22 years for the debris to build up. No big deal".

So I pulled out about three handfulls of the leaves, and then vacuumed out the little stuff that had crumbled.  So she was clean as a whistle and working perfectly.

Then cupla days ago she said the fan is vibrating again. I whipped the glovebox out again and sure enough, fan was FULL of leaves again. In just a cupla weeks !!

At night the car is locked in a garage, and two or three days a week, during the day it is parked out in the open. But so are millions of cars in lots of places.

Clearly there is a 22 year build-up of leaves somewhere in the fan's inlet ducting, so I need to find the source of the leaves. But I can't see just where that inlet ducting is, and/or where that inlet draws the fresh air from. 

Was hoping someone might have a pic of a drawing of the cabin air system's inlet ducting, or component location.

p.s. When the AirCon is set to Inside Air the fan is drawing the air from the passenger's front footwell area .. and there's no leaves there !  LOL

Thanks all

 

[campbeam]

I am expecting a similar layout as the Camry/Aurion. Air intake is the area underneath the wipers and the firewall. Not sure whether you have actually removed the cabin air filter when you did the cleaning.

Following eBay listing has a diagram of the cabin air filter system underneath the dashboard.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/153936392070

I suspect/expect that there are more gum leaves in the inlet ducting that have found their way to the areas that you cleaned. Looks like a rinse and repeat situation until all of those accumulated leaves are gone. Good opportuntity to also remove and clean/replace that cabin air filter.