I've never attempted this on my car, (1991 DX w/AC) but has anyone successfully sucked/removed the debris that inevitably enters the evaporator? And I thought loud exhaust was bad, the sound of leaves rustling in your evaporator sucks worse in my opinion.

To remove the blower the evaporator case has to come out, but id like to prevent that by getting the majority of the crap out. Any advise would be helpful.

 

are u trying to suck it from the vacuum line???
if so have some1 in the car to rev ur car at 3k rpm then when u put the vacuum hole into the liquid the rpm WILL DROP!!!!!
have whoever is revving it step on the gas to keep it from dying
Caution alot of smoke will come out of ur exhaust
after it stop bogging plug back the vacuum hose and let the car run for about 30mins or so then drive around the block
it may still have white smoke coming out of ur exhaust the next day so i say leave it on just try to rev it all out

 

Lol wut ^ this kid is talking about Seafoam??!?

 

LOL wtf. I think he is talking about seafoam.

To the OP, are you sure the leaves are in the evaporator case? And not just in the blower motor housing/case?

Either way, you don't have to pull the evap to pull the blower motor.

Remove the blower motor and then you can vacuum out the passenger side of the evap box. Getting to the driver side is a different story, though.

 

^^ hes right.

you might be able to vacuum on the driver side if you use a flexible tube and push it through the passenger housing.

 

i would try the flexible tube thing honestly. i am not really sure what else there is besides either replace (~$250) or to take out to clean (still a biotch to do). you can roll like i do, all windows down as fast as possible. usually works for me, but i do have to have an extra shirt cause of back sweat.

 

The problem is there is no room to simply "pull" the blower motor down without removing the evaporator housing first. (according to factory service manual) Then the whole assembly slides to the left and out, and from there the blower is pie.

Blower motor labor is like this: 0.9hrs for 1988-1991 w/o AC, 1.9hrs w/AC (not including recharge/vac) so I know this is a fair size job, but given my complaint, all this shouldn't be necessary.

Yes it is in the evaporator case, I stuck my bore scope into the vents and down until I saw the pileup in there. At this point it looks like I'm gonna have to pull those clips off the evap housing and find a really small vacuum cleaner tube. I really don't feel up to removing crap that hasn't been touched for almost 18 years.

And I am technician by trade, I just don't feel like making what should be a 20-30 minute job take hours. Any other advise welcome.

 

I found that the blower motor and fan drop out of the bottom of the blower unit via 3 screws. See parts 1, 4, and 10 below. One can then reach the evaporator air inlet area at least enough to get a pencil-size vacuum cleaner head (WalMart has a set, if memory serves) in there and/or compressed air to blow the debris around and vacuum much of it out. I do not think the clips on the evap housing need to be undone but if so, this is not too hard, and one can squeeze a vacuum or compressed air nozzle through by forcing the casing apart.

 

pull the evap core cover the exposed lines and wash through with a hose thats what i did

 

I am trying this right now on a 2000 civic (doesn't have a cabin air filter).

I pulled down the glove box all the way down (past normal open); moved the electrical cords in front of the evaporator; pulled out a rectangular black cover by the evaporator (can see this on link called "how to install a cabin air filter on 96-00 civic") by loosening it and then dropping it down below the glove box. Dug out lots of crud, and now I'm going to try vacuuming in this opening.