Noise Coming From Blower?

That’s enough info to not walk but run away from this dealership.

 

welcome!
there's probably litter in the fan blades. ask them to open up the cabin filter and take a look.

more importantly, have you done your due dilegence here, researching gen 3 egr and head gasket failyres?

how many miles on her?

 

Give us the miles on the car when asking about it please.

 

Bisco is probably correct...debris in the fan cage. It’s not anything major to correct but may be rodent damage elsewhere. I would negotiate with the seller to have it corrected before you buy. What seems to be a minor problem can turn into a huge mess if rodents have infested the car.

 

The 3 is probably referring to the Generation 3
And the Four is the model/trim level of that Gen3 Prius

 

OP is paying listed price for a trim 4 on a trim 3. If your willing to pay trim 4 dollars on a trim 3 then be my guest.

 

i hope he wasn't about to purchase it last thursday...

 

My eyes almost read that as squirrel cage...

Yeah, very likely rodent infestation, and dealership doesn't want to know? Maybe you don't want to know them. That said: they're ALL like that, so yeah: if you persevere: get them to pull the glove box, see for sure what's going on.

The fix btw: is to pull off the wipers/motors and underlying cowl, and afixing a 1/4" opening size rodent screen over the cabin air intake.

 

I was thinking along the line of putting rat bait poison near window cowl cabin opening to save wrenching for plan B.

 

Even if the dealer has cleaned out all of the tell-tale signs of rodent infestation, you still wouldn't know what they have gnawed on before they got evicted.

 

I would think twice about putting rat bait anywhere in the car. Remember... it’s poison...usually Warfirin. It’s a blood thinner that systemically makes the critters hemorrhage internally and die. You certainly don’t want any decomposing rodents in your car. Additionally you wouldn’t want to have this poison circulating around in your HVAC system.

 

I just fixed a related problem five minutes ago on my Prius (2011 Prius standard model, Three trim)
I wanted to replace the cabin air filter. I remembered there was a sound like a leaf being scraped against something whenever the cabin air blower was running. Well, yeah that's exactly what it was. After I pulled the cabin air filter I noticed it was put in sideways. Pretty sure that was me that put it in wrong when I was both hurried AND lacking clear knowledge of how to install the thing correctly. It had been pinched at a couple spots. The semi-rigid edges of this filter go at the front and back of the car, not the left and right. The soft floppy edges go at the left and right. The arrow for "air flow direction" on your filter should point toward the blower (down) not away from it.
Anyway the cabin air blower is right below the cabin filter housing so if you remove the filter (fan OFF please) you can stick your fingers in there and grab any foreign object that may be sitting on the blower.
In my case the fix required no disassembly of the car aside from pulling the glove box out and the cabin filter cover off (YouTube explains how to do this; it's a no-tools job but you need to know where the parts fit together in order to remove them)

 

You guys have probably scared Mr EZ away from buying his Prius and from this board! Poor guy asked about a noise in the fan and now he is being ripped off by the dealership (did he even say it was at a dealership?) because he isn't sure if it's a 3 or 4 (he thought it was a 3, they say it's a 4....maybe they are right and he's not?) and now horror of all horrors he has a rodent infestation that has been covered up by the seller and the car could have all kinds of wiring problems due to the gnawing habits of these (imaginary?) critters and he can't use poison to get rid of them because he will breathe this poison through his HVAC when the rodent dies and rots inside the car.
Why hasn't anyone warned him that the head gasket is about to blow and that he shouldn't buy it because it's a gen3 and they ALL blow the head gaskets and that he'll certainly need a new hybrid battery within months if not weeks?

Sheeeeesh!

 

If you gon own a gen 3, you gon get.