newgsman

iTrader: (4)

I just bought a 2010 ultra premium (Canadian) car and it seems there is an issue with either the blower motor or some other related component on cold weather startup.
When the car is first started there seems to be significant noise coming from the blower motor or behind that area of the car. If I turn the climate control to OFF the noise goes away. If I turn the climate control to AUTO, the noise comes back even though the climate screen shows that the fan is still off (because the car is still stone cold). If I manually switch the fan speed to a higher setting like 3 or 4 the noise subsides significantly and sounds like a normal blower fan rotating at that speed. When very cold, at the very low fan speeds, the blower (or something else behind the dash?) is very loud and with a rattling kind of sound. I don't understand why the sound is there when in AUTO climate mode with fan speed seemingly at a zero setting.

The previous owner said the blower motor needs replacing but I am not totally convinced given that the noise is most pronounced at very low speeds and hardly at all at high speeds. Also once the car is fully warmed up the abnormal noises effectively disappear and the blower sounds normal.

Any one else experience anything similar?

Thank you for your feedback.

TLPLEXUS

I have similar issue when I have the fan turn on higher than level 1. I couldn't figure out where the rattling is coming from but the rattling sound only appears when the fan is on (or if the climate control is on). Noise goes away once I have the fan or climate control turned off. So it has been some fan mechanism (or bearing) inside that is starting to go bad. Let me know if you are able to locate the source of the problem too.

newgsman

iTrader: (4)

The noise got worse over a few weeks. I changed out the blower motor. A very easy DIY. There are three screws holding it in place. Just remove the under dash cover below the glove box and you can see everything. Checking out the old assembly it looks like the fan carousel became loose and the wobbling caused the rattling noise. As it got looser it started rubbing and that made very noisy and with excessive rattling. Finally it would run for about ten seconds and then jam up. If I cycled the control on and off ti would restart but jam up again. right away That's when I changed it out. Everything is fine now. You could try and repair the blower by pushing down on a spring washer that keeps the fan carousel secure on its spindle. I did that but it didn't help for too long. You may have better luck

Clutchless

The fan motors run all the time in most vehicles these days and it is not uncommon for them to fail after 7 years or so. It failed on my 2013 Sienna right before I bought it in March 2020. I suspect the same fan motor is used on many different Toyota and Lexus products.