Mr. Orange

Hi everyone,

Not sure if this is the place, but I suspect I'll be in for a lot of cleanup here. My A/C and heater don't smell awful, but I did find a bunch of hair in my AC filter. I'm afraid some animal previously made my car its home, or worse has died there. How do I access the heater core and the AC fan? When I get in there, what should I use to clean these parts to make sure they are sanitized and won't smell.

Thanks

importkid

It would probably be in the cabin filter department. Heater core has water/coolant in it.

Open your hood and on the passenger side carefully release the plastic tabs for the weather strip and get the black/white/grey/dirty as heck filter out of there and see what's going on.

Mr. Orange

Ok that's good to hear. I had already changed the filter, which is when I noticed the huge ball of hair. I guess the mouse must have not been able to get past the filter? There weren't any holes in the filter.

importkid

Take a shop vac/some crazy strong vac you can find around and just suck anything you can out from the port behind that filter. I had a customer get a rat/chipmunk make a nest in there out of yarn type substance. I was removing vents and vacuuming, it was a bear to deal with. You could probably turn the fan on full blast and put the vacuum next to the vents and suck out a good bit more as well. Might come down to removing the actual blower wheel. I've never taken one out of the S, but I've also done a ton of them in other cars and never had one that was difficult to get out.

zeroptzero

You know that you can pick up hair like particles and fur from normal daily driving. I've seen it on quite a few s2000 cabin filters that were not serviced for long periods of time, including mine when I first bought the car. I also noticed it when I replaced my oem radiator, it accumulated between the rad and the a/c condenser, and I know others who found that on the rad as well. Big clumps of fur like material can accumulate wherever air is being sucked inwards. If you had a mouse in there you would have mouse droppings and urine, not just fur, and that would be a tight area for a mouse to get into unless your plastic cowl cover was really loose. I'm willing to bet you don't have a mouse issue.

cosmomiller

Three ways to tell if you actually have the little bastards.
1 You find an actual nest.
2 You see footprints in dirt/dust
3 You see droppings.