Vansibel

I've noticed this a while ago and didn't make a big deal out of it. But I just read on another thread that it might be related to a problem. I created another thread because my symptom are a bit different. Every time I start the car I hear a noise coming from the cabin air filter in the glove box. I even took a direct look at it and it's actually the door that seem to tighten up. When doing that you cannot open the door as a mechanism put pression on it. It does that 3 or 4 time and then the climate control can be used (take less than a minute). If it's the first time I'm using the car in the morning the climate control always reset to 25 degree Celsius. If I shut the car for example an hour and start it again the previous temperature that I set won't reset. So basically I'm wondering if this seems to be normal for the ls. Thanks.

hfahmy

Did you or someone change the cabin filter lately? If so, did you experience the problem after the change?

Vansibel

Yes I did change the filter with a non-toyota one I bought on ebay. The clicking noise was there before, as for the temp resetting I cannot say if it did that before. If it's not supposed to reset overnight I can put back the old filter and see it it change anything.

Edit: I did put on recirculate before. The clicking is not actually a click sound but more like something squeezing tight.

hfahmy

Try to reinstall the old filter and see what happens. If the clicking was there before you changed it, previous owner or shop might have tried to change the filter without putting in recirculate and affected the mechanism, when you changed the filter again you might have put the door out of alignment. Many thread about folks who fixed the filter door after changing without recirculate, you will need to take the glove box out.

Vansibel

Here is a video of this issue:


After more reading it seems my door broken

After reading this i noticed that on recirculate the door do not expose the filter and I always have to lift it manually. I always knew about putting on recirculate before changing filter so I can only assumed that I bought the car in that condition. So if I understand correctly the clip might not be broken and I might be able to put it back again ?

Vansibel

Man I love this forum. Was midnight here and I said to myself why not give this a try before bedtime. So I took a look at shibumi thread to disassemble the glove box and 20 minutes later my problem is completely fixed! Guess I was lucky and the mechanism wasn't broke so I just put it back in place. Now everything is working as it should and the door open by itself when I put on recirculate. I was surprise how easy the whole ordeal was. At least that's one problem less, now if only the shock absorber were that easy Many thanks to Shibumi who took the time to document his glovebox removal and to yoshirocks for pointing to his thread.

hfahmy

Great job!!!

Vansibel

Thanks to you also for the hint. At first a broken door was hard to believe since I was so careful about the recirculation each time I checked the filter, but it was the culprit after all. Time to but the warning sticker in here!

Vansibel

Just letting you know, this sound is a good indicator to tell if you actually broke the plastic mechanism when lifting the door and possibly have replace the whole unit. If this sound happen it mean you got lucky and the mechanism is not broken because the sound you hear is actually the unbroken plastic arm putting pression on the door.