Where is the air vent to outside air?

Where is the air vent to outside air?

Does anyone know where is the vent that the car pulls in air from the outside when you mess with the RECIRCULATE setting on the A/C?

I have a AC blower that leaks air from the outside when my RECIR setting is closed to the outside air. In the picture below, you see that the blower is using the air from inside the car, but if you put your hand in the blower you can feel outside air coming into the car if you are moving at a fast pace.





I thought the air vent was under the wiper area, but I pulled the wipers and everything off a junkyard car and I found nothing that looks like an air vent.







Any ideas?

Yeah man, in truth it is actually a Prizm that I was ripping apart at the junkyard. Trust me, you don't want that hood. It's pretty dinged up.

Which vents? Center or Left?

It could be under the passenger side wiper area, I didn't have a flashlight to really get in there. I plan to rip apart a blower and see what's up there. I have to say those blowers are hard to pull off as there are like ten 10 MM bolts that are hard to unbolt due to the hard to reach space. Probably end up being frustrated and going hulk on the blower unfortunately.

Here too. My theory is that the vent doors that swing open in the blower are losing their seal or need a new gasket. But from what I see, it is not a replaceable part. Think we need a new blower.

Yeah, I played with the cable and it is retracting and opening all the way like it should.
Here are the breakdown of the 2 settings:

1) When the slider is pulled to the outside air setting, the blower door closes to the cabin and no air comes in (perfect)

2) when the slider is pulled to shutoff outside air, the blower door raises up and is suppose to seal the outside air from coming in. A little bit of air still comes through. I played with the cable and plastic tab assembly but no luck.

No the 2 center vents do not pop out. You have the pull the whole panel that contains the clock, 2 air vents and the frame around the radio. Look for 2 hidden grooves on each side of the panel and pry out carefully with a flathead.

That's the plan as a new blower housing with blower from Toyota is over $500.

But I must say that it is a bad design. I took off the blower and I can clearly see that the door is not shut all the way. It is going to be hard to find weatherstripping this small.... I know that 01-02 Corolla have like a servo to open and close this door. Maybe this is the reason why this had to be redesigned. I wish I had access to an 01 - 02 to confirm that this was redesigned.

Does the 01-02 Prizms have the servos to open and close the air vent? If you have servos you have this setup:



For the 98-00 folks, we have a cable setup like what you see here in the bottom of the picture:




IMO, I think this cable setup is poorly designed (don't know about the servo setup). People that live in the colder climate will notice this more. Here is why.

If you look at the picture of the blower, you see the cabin vent. This cabin vent is used to pull air from inside the cabin and recirculate in the AC blower system. The AC blower door for this cabin vent is swung up wide open letting air intake from the cabin through the AC if the cable switch is all the way set to CLOSED to OUTSIDE AIR. And then vise versa, the blower door will swing down shutting access to air intake from the cabin if the cable is set all the way to the outside air for air intake. When the blower door is swung down, this allows air from the top of the dash to freely flow into the AC blower.

Well, my problem with why this is poorly designed is what if the cable setting is set to HALFWAY? Halfway means you want half the air from the cabin and half from the outside. In cold climate, this would mean you will take in COLD COLD air from the outside and since the cabin air vent is HALFWAY opened you will allow that COLD COLD air into the cabin also. I think this is the reason why the 01 -02 don't have the halfway option. It's either fully cabin air or fully outside air; none of this mixed temperature air entering the cabin.

Basically, for the 98-00 when you have it on the HALFWAY setting, it's like you opened your car window halfway. In the summertime you may not notice it, you will feel that cold air.

Try this on a cold day. Put your cable setting on the HALFWAY setting with Blower set to OFF and temperature set to RED. Then open your glove compartment box. Look at the firewall behind the glove compartment glove and you can see the AC blower. Now take a drive down the highway and stick your hand in front of that AC blower. YES that's FREEZING COLD air coming into your cabin!!!
What happens is that this is the point where the air source(cabin air or outside air) comes in before it hits the heater core behind the center dash which would warm up the air that comes out of the car air vents. When you have it on HALFWAY, you are allowing outside air into the cabin.

This is the same principle that some members and I have about this blower door not sealing right. The cold outside air comes into the cabin from this leak when we have the cable setting fully on the CABIN AIR only, meaning the blower door should be fully closed to OUTSIDE AIR.

:rant: