Help! need to take off my entire dash

[TxBmbleBee]

I need to take off my entire dash to get to my evaporator. It has to be clean or changed im not sure yet. a dead rate died in my blower motor housing and when i unknowingly turned on the blower it blew crap all into the evap housing. Please if there are any experts that have disassembled there entire dash, please help. or have changed their evaporator? do i need to drain the a/c lines? thanks for you help

signed

frustrated owner who now hates rats!

[akora12]

PM Damon (camryonbronze). He's done a dash swap and should be able to help you. How did a rat get up there anyways?

[TxBmbleBee]

thanks i will. he got in through my fender well. if you look at the top of the hood of your solara on the exterior near the windshield...you will see a black plastic trim piece where the blower retrieves exterior air into the cabin. on each side are little holes perfect for a rat or mouse to squeeze through, im guessing he then fell down into my blower and could not get back out and passed away there. since my solara had sat for a few months i did not know this and when i cranked up the air i was greeted with the foul smell of death! thanks again for your help i will message him.

[youngblood]

I, too, know the foul smell of rat death! I had a small rat/mouse get into the fresh air intake in my car and die there while the car was being stored. I wasn't sure what the smell was until I started getting bits of rat's nest blowing out of the dash vents while running the fan. Later, a small mummified carcass lodged up against the inside of the vent director. Yuck! Drastic measures are called for when you get that kind of situation! I sold the car (wasn't a lara).

[TxBmbleBee]

haha glad to know someone else has been through the same ordeal im facing. unfortunately im a poor college student and cant afford to sell this car and get another. my only option is to rip out this dash and tear apart that evaporator and clean all that crap out! thanks man

[TxBmbleBee]

well you definately need the steering wheel off to take off the entire dash, and the turn signal and windshield wiper knobs too. the whole dash is completely out, and i pulled the whole blower assembly and there is rat crap and piss all in it. the piss was actually running down my fingers as i was pulling off the blower. im off to the junk yard tomorrow to get a whole new blower assembly, cause there is no way that smell will ever leave so ill just start fresh. ill keep yall updated and try to get pics or vids up. not sure yet what im gonna do. the evaporator and box is gonna be tricky to pull out, ac lines and heater lines go to the engine bay, im not quite sure how to disconnect those, or drain the freon.

also special thanks to camryonbronze for all his helpful advice!

[CamryOnBronze]

glad you got it figured out, that sounds awful man... >.<

[redgen1]

gross. sorry dude, glad you figured it out... and now i wont have much trouble this summer figuring out how to get the dash off