ronjenn

Dear Members,

My wife owns a 2004 ES330 and was complaining about the crackling sound behind the dash. Thanks to this awesome forum I soon found out it must be the servo located on the passenger side behind the glove compartment. I removed the servo and fixed the well known worm wheel and it was fixed!!
Unfortunately my wife told me the next day that one of the vents in the middle was blowing hot air with the A/C on!, bummer.

I decided to take it off again and clean it with rubbing alcohol.
The are multiple threads and DIY about this but it was a nice and sunny day and decided to take some pictures!!

In short:
1. open and empty glove box, remove the 2 twist clips inside the glove box and the screw on right hand side and easy down the glove box.
2. pull out the glove box from the clips and put aside.
3. give a tug on the bottom part and it will come off, remove wire connected.
4. remove three screws on top and the 2 10mm bolts on both sides. The one on the right hand side is covered by moulding see pictures. This part will come off and remove another wire for trunk release button.
5. remove the black blower by prying of plastic clip. Remove several wires connected there see pictures.
6. remove the servo there are 3 screws, for the 3rd one you need very short screwdriver. I used a taller drill bit.
7. mark the white arm with a marker so you know how to put it back.Once removed you can open the servo by opening the 6 clips as pictured. Please be careful because they break easy. I broke one.
8. If you have the crackling sound you can take a pair of scissors and move the metal part from axle a little bit so there is no play anymore.
9. clean all metal parts with rubbing alcohol and install reverse order.

the Mrs. is happy since all vents are blowing cold air again!!

Let me know it the link below works it is my amazon drive:

WILLYumD

Don't have this car and never had this problem but thank you for your contribution!!!

citizenick

Very very helpful! I'll be attempting this soon! The one on the drivers side looks easy to get to.

Also, if i need to buy a new servo, is the left and right servo the same part?

I see 2 part numbers for air mix servo. it has no. 1( 87106-41041 ) and no. 2 ( 87106-41051)

do these stand for left and right? or visa versa? or does no. 2 mean its a revision of the same part?

​​​​​​​thanks!

PingPong10

Where are the pictures? I have similar problem, always hot air, not cold at all.

PingPong10

Actually the pictures are in the Amazon account and they are great. I'll try this fix this weekend. I can't wait.

citizenick

Update:

Both passenger and driver air mix servos are working properly! I had the symptom of working servos, but making gurgling/mouse wheel noises when temperatures were set around 70-80F degrees.

My thoughts:

Drivers side: very easy to access the servo. right next to the throttle pedal. Internals were clean. There was play at the "worm thing" so I performed #8 step, by using scissors and moving the metal part further away from the base of the motor so that there was no play.

Passenger side: The photos really helped with disassembly of the glove box surround. Thanks! This servo was a major PITA to remove. Bottom two screws were easy. top screw to almost an hour. Short screwdriver did not work. I used a screwdriver shaped like an Allen wrench to remove. The internal disk was very very dirty, 90 degrees of the disk seemed to be scratched up, and black grease covered the disk. the metal prongs were also covered with dirty black grease. I cleaned it all up with alcohol and QTIP. then i performed step #8.

I pretty much broke all the clips...I did not have a light touch =(. I used some duct tape to put the servo back together.

I left the passenger side top 3rd screw out, I didn't want to bother with it if I needed to service the servo again. Hopefully it'll hold up.

Thanks again ronjenn and club lexus! I've saved hundreds of dollars so far!