Needing Help on my Tacoma

I need help with my thermostat controls or something else related. This morning I went to turn on my heater to thaw out my windshield accounting for the cold weather frost. It sounded weak when I turned it on high speed and as I turned off then turned it back on with a very or little blow back through the vents. Any ideas brothers and sisters of Tacoma world

 

If you park outside, maybe a mouse nest?or just a clogged cabin air filter?

 

Does it sound like the blower motor is struggling? It is behind/under the glove box.
Could be clogged up, when was the last time you changed the filter?

Also, the brushes on the motor do get dusty and the motor operation gets intermittent.

I've cleaned out the brushes on many vehicles and sent them on their way.

This is my guess so far.

Maybe make a high quality video and show us the problem

 

It won’t turn on at all now. Yes it’s under the glove box.

 

Give the lower left glove box area a nice smack.

 

Maybe it's not the motor but the switch. My '13 has a flaky fan speed switch. This thread addresses this issue.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/fan-speed-switch-not-working.70275/

 

I wouldn’t beat on anything.
The fact that the fan will no longer turns on, on any setting, make me think it’s a blower issue. But why guess, when you can test and verify.

Here’s a great DIY to diagnose it.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/2nd-gen-information-diagnostics.784008/#post-28042158

 

Could be a rodent stuck in blower fan, have seen this many times. They chew thru the cabin filter.

 

Having to replace the blower motor isn't an unusual problem. Mine went out several years ago.

 

Check the filter to make sure it’s not plugged up. But otherwise replacing the blower fan is like ridiculously easy. It will take you less than 15 minutes to do

 

Got power and ground at the motor?

 

Yes, with your hand. It wont damage anything unless you are Andre the giant.

Turn on the blower motor and smack the bottom of it. This will loosen up dust between the brushes and the magnets.

If that works, then you know you need to clean out the blower motor

 

-make sure the blower motor fan is not bad. It may be. It blows air. Not heats or cools it.
-make sure you don't have any of the common issues with the blower motor resistor, and wires that go to it. If you do (mine does), it prevents the knob setting from actually fully working and taking effect. Say you put it on high. It might be on low

That matches your description.

Also, keep in mind, hot air is created by coolant. It's blown off of the coolant passing through pipes and whatnot, basically.
If the coolant is not hot, the air will not be hot.
This is a thing when it comes to heating up a vehicle. If it's cold as hell, and you just started it up, guess what. It will not be hot. It will blow air, but that air will not yet be hot until the coolant is.

This is why it's common in Europe, Canada, etc. cold winter type of environments, for vehicles to have things like an additional/aux heater
brands like Eberspacher, Webasto, etc.
basically a separate heater, kinda like a diesel heater (if not actually one) that's probably at least $300-500
There's many heaters. Oil pan heaters.

There is even such heaters where you can press a button on a fob, and it will heat the cabin. Potentially with the engine not even on.
That way getting in the car, it's already warm inside. And probably easier to enter, regarding glass, doors, and handles.
The type of thing a person might have, or get put on, if they're in Germany and have an Audi S8 with every option.
Never seen a 2G Taco with such things.

Most I've heard was a guy who lived in Alaska told me every parking space outside at a mall or something would have electrical plugs
so your vehicle, with an oil pan heater you've installed after
would plug into that when parked.

When I lived in a place that got down to like 0deg, start the truck up to go to work
I just accepted it was gonna be cold as shit in the beginning and dressed accordingly.

On any vehicle, after 10/100, the blower motor is a thing that can go. Hopefully it's not too expensive or hard to reach on these trucks.
I don't think mine sounds the best. I'm sure that has to do with the bearing having wear. Don't know if it's able to be greased/serviced, or even worth doing that. I personally wouldn't mind throwing a new blower motor at mine.

On a separate note, and this is probably not related
I believe during the following:
-defrost windshield
-heat towards feet and face possibly also
truck is set from factory to kick on compressor to dehumidify
so hopefully the compressor works and system as at the right level of charge. Not a bad idea to do sometimes.
I'm not 100% sure about which settings kick on the compressor, and if its only windshield defrost.

 

The blower motor in a 2nd gen Tacoma is fairly easy. Just a glove box and a few plastic panels need to come out, then a few other pieces.

Probably a 4-5 hour job for someone that is good with tools but isn't really a mechanic. A decent mechanic can have the motor out in 30 minutes or less, probably 1 hour for a complete blower motor swap.

The hood doesn't even need to be open for this job