Photos - Hybrid Battery Blower Fan Cleaning

Another Prius followed me home yesterday. This happens occasionally.

This one's an ex-taxi with 527,000km on it (ie 327,000 miles), which means that there are a few things to do.

It will need the usual - throttle body cleaning, fuel injectors cleaned, engine oil & filter (20w50 for such a high mileage car), air filter, cabin filter, windscreen wiper blades and whatever else I come across.

Tonight I fitted two wires to the hybrid battery so that I could charge and balance it with a Prolong charger.

Just when I thought I was done for the night (a bit after midnight) I figured I'd better check the battery blower fan and clean it if required.

Just as well.

Check out the photos - probably the worst Prius fan I've seen.

Almost no air would have been getting through.




I already had a spare clean fan so I fitted that one.


The replacement fan in place.


With the fan cover removed.






A lot of the gunk was easily removed with my fingers but it felt rather awful.


This is how I clean fans these days.
I used to do it with a cotton stick.
Then I got an air compressor (to blow the dust out).
Then I got a commercial-level steam cleaner, which cleans a fan to almost new condition.
Recently I tried this stuff (Windex Surface & Glass) and am amazed at how good it is for cleaning fans.
All I did was spray a bunch of into the muck and then rinsed it all out with hot water in the kitchen sink.
Within a couple of minutes the fan looked almost like new.
I'm in Australia, and don't know if this stuff is available in other countries... but next time you're cleaning a battery fan try whatever surface cleaning spray you've got in the kitchen.


You can see some of the removed dust in the sink and in the drain.


Not bad. No tools. This took seconds to do.


The extremely slow and cumbersome way of doing it.

 

I hold the fan with one hand on an angle so that the tap water goes through the blades but not into the motor area. I use my other hand to spin the fan.