Clean HVAC / low airflow

My tacoma seems to have pretty low airflow rate when I turn the fan on (AC is also dead but thats another issue). I pulled this truck out of the woods and it was home to many mice.

I have cleaned out much of the air ducts and taken out the blower and cleaned that up. It was full of mouse.

My question is: is there a way to get in a clean the evaporator/heating cores? Im wondering if a bunch of junk blew into and is slowing down the airflow.

I looked into replacing the cores and WTF I never want to take that much of the dash apart. Has anyone gottten in there and found those to be clogged? My other choice is replace the blower and see if that helps.

Without the AC the truck gets supper hot on the inside. It seems like heat is passing through the firewall from the engine bay. Great in the winter but with low airflow in the summer its not great.

 

Did you replace the cabin air filter?
There's not really any access to the evaporator beyond what you can see/get to through the blower opening, there are some spray foam coil cleaners you can try but not sure how good they would work.

 

Yes I did replace the filter, and installed hardware cloth over the opening so no more mice can find there way down into it.

Does anyone have a diagram of how the heating/cooling system looks. I might try to scope it to see. I dont have any smell anymore so that is positive.

I have some werring noise from the fan so maybe it is just bad.

 

This is the best I can do.

 

I've seen a video on flooding the core box with coil cleaner on a 4R or LC (I think it was a Timmy video) but it felt like some parts were glossed over

 

Thats a good diagram. So to me it looks like the blower connects directly to the box the cores sit in. So I should be able (probably did) vaccume that out when the blower is dropped.

Can someone who has pulled the dash apart confirm that is true?

 

Closest thing I've had apart is a gen 2 Tundra but yea it's directly connected, most stuff I've had apart (mostly Ford's & Dodges) has the evaporator mounted perpendicular to the outlet of the blower but Toyota has it mounted parallel.
I've never had my blower out so I don't know how far in there you can get from the blower opening.

 

The blower and its wiring connector is below the glove box right above the passenger side floor board. I've worked on an 06 Tacoma fan blower box that was nested by squirrels, it filled with macadamia nuts.
You can listen to the the blower speed to see if it go thru all speeds during operations.
You mentioned there were mice in the area, might want to look into the wiring to see if there is any chewed up/cut wire that can cause the loss of blower fan high speed. Good luck!

 

This is a perfect picture. Thank you!

Idk how you guys take on that task. It looks terrifying.

 

That's a Tundra that I did a few years ago, it had an A/C inop because a mouse had chewed the wires off the evaporator temp sensor.

Once you have pulled a few it's not too bad although I have to say that that one was much more involved than the Fords and Dodges that I typically get. Took me about 7 hrs whereas those typically take me 3-4.

I like doing them providing the vehicle isn't a trash can and the plastic isn't all brittle.

If I ever get a Tacoma to do I'll be sure to document it the best I can.