Strange sound under the steering wheel. Link to video

i'm wondering if it's part of the hvac system, and it's jammed.

 

Put some grease on it. It's probably the servo that controls the temperature in the car. Try turning off the AC and see if the sound goes away.

 

Thats the noise im hearing tooo!!

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That's my guess as well. Could be the linkage controlling the HVAC vents for inside/outside air.

 

how many miles on her?

 

The slide Post is not in the actuator Cam or it broke off turn a.c. on off and you should see the cam moving with a slide pin that should move inside the cam

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fairly common complaint in older pri.

 

The device that moves that linkage around is called a 'servo', and there are two parts to it: a motor, obviously, and a position sensor so the HVAC computer can compare the position it is in to the position wanted.

In Gen 1 and Gen 2, the type of position sensor is a plain old potentiometer that can get noisy (in the electrical sense, I mean) with age. This is the same thing that happens in Gen 1 with the accelerator "big hand syndrome" or the power steering shaking the wheel.

The computer is using the motor to try to hold the servo in one position, while the electrical position signal coming back to the computer is jumping around.

You can either replace the servo with a new one, or just clean the potentiometer inside. Easy, problem solved.

-Chap

 

That's just your Air flap servo motor acuator making that noise. It's quite common on many Toyotas. Mine does it too. It ain't going to hurt anything as long it's working. Just live with it.

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Just living with it is an option, though it is making unnecessary constant motion, and likely to wear out faster. It's easy enough to fix I don't see much reason to have to put up with it.

-Chap

 

I got the same problem. At first, there was this strange sound, kind of like grinding. It made me think of some tiny animal...mewling. LOL. I do not know. But it wasn't very loud. Eventually, I found that it would make the sound whether or not the A/C was on. But if I did turn the A/C on and hit that front defrost vent button, it would go away. Then I had the dealer under the dash replacing an A/C part.. it may have been a condenser core, I forget. But directly afterwards, the sound went from a grinding sound to a clunking sound. About four months later, now that vent and just does not work. A little air escapes but there is something in the way and it won't actually blow.

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It bears repeating—if you have a Gen 1, or an older Gen 2, old enough that one of the heater servos has become noisy and is waffling back and forth, just fix it. It is easy to confirm what the trouble is (just bend down there and watch) and easy to fix (just take servo out, clean, reinstall).

If you leave it waffling for too long (years, I'd guess) it will probably wear itself out eventually. That would still be easy to fix, but you might then end up buying the part rather than simply cleaning it.

-Chap