Dash board making noise using Recirculion Button

[flyboyron]

My wife has an 04 Vibe and what I found is that when the Recirculate button is ON, (green light is on) the system works fine with A/C on or off.

When you push the button to turn OFF the recirculation (button light goes out) there is a noise that sounds like a soft banging noise. It seems that whatever linkage or connection to the door that opens and closes to recirculate the air is constantly opening and closing. The air coming through the vents will not be steady but speed up and slow down. That is not because the fan speed, but because a door or vent is opening or closing causing more and less air to push through the vents in the dash. It will do this with the A/C on or the A/C off as long as the Recirculate button is OFF.

The only thing that causes the noise to stop is pushing the Recirculate button so it is on.

I told my wife to leave the recirculate button on (green light on) so it doesn't make any noise and cause damage until I can figure out what the problem is.

I thought you guys might have heard of this before.

Any ideas?

[trb]

Very common problem, there are several threads on it. The gear that operates the recirculate air door is missing some teeth and the motor keeps trying to move it. Solution is to either remove and rotate the gear 180 degrees or get a new one.

Here is one of the threads. Plus there are a few more with more pictures of swapping around the gear too.

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=23692" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Found one more:

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3435" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;