We've been having what passes for a heat wave in the Seattle area over the last week, so I decided to check if the rear A/C was still blowing cold. I set the rear blower to high and put my hand over all of the ceiling vents and found that it was blowing cold air, but very weakly. This was consistent on all the vents, not just the ones furthest from the blower. I could hear the motor running at what I expect to be the high speed behind the right rear wheel, so I don't think the motor is bad. Could I have a blend door problem? I don't sit back there often so I don't know how strongly the air is supposed to come out of there.

I also have somewhat of a stupid question: Where is the intake for the rear climate control system? Is it the vent behind the right sliding door near the floor?

 

Update: I found the intake for the rear blower - it's in the rear cargo area on the right side a few inches above the floor, in that false panel that looks like it's supposed to mirror the jack stowage bin. You can't see it if you're standing, but if you run your fingers along the underside of those two trim pieces molded into the plastic you'll find the openings.

I'm now wondering if at some point I might have stored a plastic bag or something back there that blocked those openings and caused the rear blower to get screwed up. But if that happened I would think that the blower motor would sound screwed up.

 

Update: After I had the saga with the main wiring harness (see this thread), the rear overhead vents seem to blow as strongly as I would expect. My guess is that when I had the A/C issue they ran the blend door calibration to troubleshoot it.

In other words, the dealership accidentally fixed one problem when trying to fix another problem, and for free. How often can you say that?

 

Did you ever check if the air was blowing from the floor vent by the passenger side sliding door instead?

Also, with the panel removed, did your rear blower motor spin freely? Mine seems pretty stiff and I'm trying to figure out if it is normal. No matter how hard I spin it by hand it will stop within 1/2 a second or so.

 

If it makes a couple of revolutions, it is fine.

 

Yes, air was blowing by the floor vent by the sliding door and out the vents under the front seats, but also weakly. I never got the panel off to diagnose the blower motor, as it was outprioritized on my to-do list. But like I said it got repaired accidentally by the dealership for free without any effort on my part. I had actually completely forgotten about it until a couple days after I got the car back from the wiring harness saga and put my hand over the ceiling vents.