Dav_Daddy

I have searched without finding any similar problems reported on the forum here. What happened was after driving my girlfriend to meet her daughter I shut the car off reclined my seat when I heard a strange noise. If it wasn't dark I'd have never noticed but I could see something sparking in the dash through left center vent in the dash?

Probably related a day earlier as I was looking for a radio station using seek, the radio jumped to an AM frequency (1180 I believe) and wouldn't change station, nor shut off. Once I turned the car off the radio went off however I hit a button with the key off mind you, it came back on and refused to turn off again! Eventually started working normally again and the problem hasn't resurfaced since.

Also when I'd first start out in the morning there was a weird squeal coming from somewhere on the passengers side dashboard near the speaker. I don't believe the sound was coming from the speaker because if I turned on the radio and turned the volume up you could clearly hear the music from the speaker and the sound didn't get any louder. This would stop after I drove less than a mile not to return till the next morning.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Plutoe

Wow, that's a good one---a spark inside a vent---I am sorry to say that you might reevaluate your post. The vents are a closed air delivery system and what you describe, a spark is just not possible.

On the passanger side you have the blower system, quite possibly that is producing the squek!!

Dav_Daddy

Yeah I know how it sounds. I've never been able to get air to come out of the center vents so it's possible there is no duct work back there? Although given the condition of the car I highly, highly doubt the dash board has ever been removed in the past. I figured I'd ask here thinking maybe there was a sensor or something back there? The oddest part was that the key was off along with the headlights, so nothing should have had power under there regardless.

I guess I'll have to dive into it this weekend. I'll post again with what if anything I uncover. I figure it has to be related to the radio problem somehow? It would be too big of a coincidence for both of these to occur within a couple days and be unrelated.

pwogaman

Static?

Plutoe

Static--that's a good guess as I think he said he had just gotten off of or dropped off his girlfriend---that el doit every time!!

Dav_Daddy

Ok my mother was using the car (she didn't believe me about the sparking either.)

She said that when she got on the freeway she noticed the recirculate buttons light was flashing. She heard "something like a tapping" then out of nowhere the heater came on full force out of all the vents.

The climate control temperature was set to minimum (coldest) and she hadn't run the system at all. (no fan, AC, or heat?) There has got to be a short back there somewhere. My mechanic thinks maybe (if I haven't lost my marbles) that there is a slit open in the duct work and what I saw was the light from something shorting nearby?

pwogaman

Sounds as if it went to 'defrost' without changing the vent settings. I suggest removing the N22 ACC unit to see if the circuit board is not shorting out. Also check the wire bundles for the ACC unit to see if they're free of cuts or bare wires.

http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/...u-control.html

Dav_Daddy

Thank you. Over the weekend I removed the unit as you recommended. All of the wires I could see looked like new. However when I removed the circuit board from the unit I noticed that nearly every cold solder holding the pins that come up out of the board had circular cracks running nearly the entire circumference. Also a couple of the pins looked a bit darker than the others. Not burnt, but definitely darker than the rest.

I touched up the solder on all of the pins (adding some to solder to a few) and put everything back together. So far so good, however I did notice something new this morning.

When I first started the car this morning I thought I heard a strange noise coming from the passengers floorboard or behind the glove box area? I'm not 100% it's so hard to hear with the screaming of that stupid buzzer (I had the door open and no seat belt on at the time.) I haven't heard it again since then. I plan to try and see if I can recreate it tomorrow morning, do you have any idea what it may have been?

pwogaman

Textbook repair on the board. Good Job.

The buzzing is likely the air sampler motor, something you may not have heard in a while given the condition of your board. It runs constantly when the ACC is on. It might have noisy brushes if it hasn't run in a while.

It is just under the right dash vent. It pulls air through the temperature sensor in the overhead light cluster, specifically, just in front of the sunroof switch. There is tubing that runs from there down the right "A" pillar to the noisy motor. The motor is easy to replace if it does not quiet down after a while.