The climate control fan on my 2008 Subaru Impreza has started making rattling noises sometimes when I’m running the heater or air conditioning. This is accompanied by a reduction in the of volume of air coming from the vents. It doesn’t always do this, and sometimes it starts out OK, but then later on begins making the rattling noise and losing air pressure. What could be the cause of this, and what is are the possible repairs it would need? Can the fan be repaired, or would a repair shop be more likely to just replace it? What’s the range of cost for that?
Related question: I usually try to turn off the air conditioning shortly before I arrive at my destination to blow out any condensation and warm up the venting to avoid creating any musty smells. Is it worth it for me to do this, or could it be causing more problems than it prevents?
Your blower motor may be dying, or there may simply be something like twigs or leaves in there, rubbing on the fan.
There’s really no fixing a blower. Just pull the old one and pop in a new one. Labor to do this varies wildly. I’ve seen some cars that need severe disassembly to get at the blower, and others just need to remove three screws and the blower just drops out into the passenger foot space.
Price-wise, it looks like used (most likely pulled from wrecked cars) blowers for your Soob will be about $50, and new ones are in the area of $150. If you’re so inclined, you can probably get one from a “you pull it” wrecking yard for $20 or less, and you’ll see what’s involved in replacing it before possibly doing any harm to your car.
I found a video about replacing the cabin air filter, and it looks like the Impreza’s blower is of the “pull three screws and it falls out” variety, so try dropping the blower and looking for sticks, mice, etc. before running off to buy a new blower or paying the big bucks to have a shop replace it.
If you can get at the fan easily, see if it will wiggle. Sounds to me like a bearing is bad. If so, you can probably wiggle the fan a little bit on its shaft. Then drop it right out and put a new used one in (then just replace the whole motor/fan assembly, unless Subarus are different from every other heater I’ve seen).
Thanks, gotpasswords and Arrendajo. I appreciate the opinions. My initial guess was bad bearing but it could be some kind of detritus. I’ll see if I can’t pull it out myself and check it.