Hybrid fan cleaning

You can easily do it yourself. The grille can be removed and cleaned. Access to the fan and high-voltage battery from the trunk is also simple.

 

If you have pets in the car, you should bother to replace all the battery air inlet filters and maybe clean the blower. If you don't have pets and aren't in a dusty environment, I'd just deal with the filters. In any case, checking and replacing the filters will give you an idea of whether there is stuff even available in your car to clog the filter, then stuff bypassing the filter can get to the blower. If your filters are clean, so is the blower, most likely. Unless the filters were replaced since they were clogged, such as if you had a dog but no longer do, or bought a pet car from someone who changed the filters to hide that fact.

 

First a v has many advantages and one is access to the battery fan. One 10 mm bolt is all it takes because the world’s best taxi has sliding back seats. There is no need to remove back seats or side panels either.

On the downside, there is no fan filter and the intake is under the rear passenger seat unlike the hatchback. Does not matter as you will soon see.

Merv does it while his buddy is delivering fertilizer.

Don’t worry about the 12v battery cranking the engine joke. You had to be there. It’s not necessary to pull the orange plug either because you don’t need to remove the hybrid battery cover. He’s just covering his behind hoping you will be around to buy his merch.

 

Even on the 3rd Gen hatchback there’s no need to pull the rear seat bottom. I wish NutzAboutBolts would add a disclaimer to their video. There’s one bolt (12 mm socket size IIRC) below intake grill, in behind the seat cushions, but the gap between seat bottom and back is enough you can sneak an extension through, and get fingers on the bolt to catch it.

also, the fan can be cleaned without removal; you just need to get to it, pull off the associated ductwork (run a duster boa through those ducts too). A Q-Tip works good on the fan fins. Some sort of compressed air is handy too, even just a vacuum on blow, or leaf blower.