Localmotion

I have a 1996 4runner and I went to turn on the heat and the side vents were barely working. the ones in the middle were working okay. I moved the setting to just the upper vents, and still the sides were not working as they should be. Anybody have any suggestions as to whats wrong? At all the different settings the side vents remain weak.

Thanks

matt

Chainlink

I dont know for sure but a few of my old yotas seemed to do this and the only thing I could tell was the vents were mostly affected by fresh or recyled air one thing you can do is pull off the windshield cowl(plastic cover over wiper motors) and check to see if there is an obstruction...I used to replace auto glass and I found a very high nuber of vehicles that had a ton of debris clogging that area...like I said I dont know if this helps but its a place to start


oh ya one other thing I had one yota that had a problem kinda in this realm and it turned out the previous owner had kept alot of garbage on the dash and alot of pens pennies and even french fries and slipped down through the defroster vents it was a haslte to clean out but it made a noticable difference and help the smell I had to take the fan out to access it...it is located on yours and most I believe not positive under the glove box area

Ilovemountains

Matt, did you happen to have an aftermarket head unit installed or has anyone been in your dash? I have had this problem twice, once in my Saab when I slid the head unit into the dash I pulled a vacuum hose off, and once in my 88 Toyota when one of the cables came off and the flap was not being moved by the lever. When you slide the selector does it feel like it is actually moving anything? Im not sure about the later models if they still have cables or if they went to air or electronic actuators for the vent flaps.... I dont know what it could be!

EnolaGaia

I remember on my old '85 a cable stretched or came loose in the vent selector controls, which resulted in losing 'air' at one or another set of vents. I dismantled enough of the dash to get to it and re-wired the cables to fix it.

As another poster mentioned, the amount of air shunted to the side vents seems to be different depending on whether you've selected 'fresh air' or 'recirculate'. Every Toyota truck I've had (3) had weaker side vent flow when using 'recirculate'.