Small air vent in driver's side footwell - bit of help please
Yes - me again.
The small plastic heater vent on the left side of the drivers footwell. Can someone please tell me how to safely remove that from the carpet backing? There appear to be 4 small lugs (one at each corner) but I can't work out what to do to remove the cover and so peel back some more of the carpet. They (the 4 lugs) seem fairly fragile and I don't want to break them.
Anyone know the secret knack?
hello,
You may first need to remove the carpet piece that extends down from the dash and has cut-outs for the pedals. This will provide more access and the round vents in the centre console can then be eased out from behind. There are six plastic, expanding rivets which hold this piece of carpet trim. With a thin-blade screw-driver, push out the centre 'pin' of each plastic rivet, which will permit the rivet to be extracted. The centre-pins will fall-out of the rivets behind the carpet and you may or may not find them all afterwards. They are thinner than a match-stick and about half the length. However, new rivets can be bought new from your local, friendly MB parts dept.
Once the rivets are out, the carpet panel can be removed and this will give you some additional access to the vents on the side.
Those rectangular vents are removed by sliding. Compare them to the ones that flow air to the rear passengers, between the transmission tunnel and front seat. Those, if I recall correctly, need to be slid towards the rear of the car. This translates to the ones in your picture being pulled forwards and outwards. But, go gently, in case i got the direction wrong !
OK - for anyone who might have the faintest interest, the answer appears to be that the plastic air vent doesn't come off the carpet. It's "welded" on from the other side with some kind of brown solid "glue".
To get the carpet off the tunnel I just eased it away and down and the air vent plastic tubes separated from behind. Looks as though it should be fairly simple to line things up again so that the two tubes marry up again properly.
Just need to get some decent plastic pop rivets now as a previous owner must have misplaced some of the stems and replaced them with bits of wooden dowel.
That's interesting, I've never found the need to remove those particular ones, but they look similar to the ones feeding air to the rear passengers, which are not glued and slide out. Indeed these I've removed along with the seats, seatbelt attachments and centre-console to refit their ventilation supply ducts which were not feeding air, as they had been squashed and badly fitted, ex-factory.
Anyway, interesting to learn. Thanks.
Annoyingly some of those heater air pipes held on with staples, the official ducting from MB not cheap,so go easy. Also if you are taking heater motor out, the clips holding the heater casing together have to be removed, take great care pinging these off as they so easy to loose, I speak from experience!
Yes, those corrugated heater pipes are almost of a cardboard material and stapled, as you say. In my case they were squashed flat where they go around the gear lever to the rear. Good luck with the operation!
if you are replacing the blower resistor, you may wish to mount that on the air intake on the bulkhead, as on later models, for future ease of access. Also, I would consider replacing the blower motor, if it has any signs at all of squeakiness at low speed. But I don't know how much a new costs.
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Thanks Arnie,
Have already removed the front carpet piece and all those plastic rivets.
It's the side carpet that I'm having trouble with. It seems to be the small rectangular plastic air vent that is stopping me pulling the carpet away from the tunnel and I'm worried that if I pull too hard it will break the air vent (pictured).