This series of photos deals with what I affectionately refer to as, "The Squirrel Project." The van in the pics is one of our rental cargo vans. The term "Squirrel" refers to the stowaway that was picked up somewhere in Oregon and brought back to Georgia. Representatives from the department who rented the van reported hearing strange noises coming from behind the dash. Debris began appearing on the floor. Then not long after, the HVAC system began to malfunction.

The problem with the HVAC was one of air distribution. The a/c blew ice cold, but mostly through the defrost vent and not out of the dash. No air would come out of the floor vents either.

My initial guess was that Mr. Squirrel chewed through the vacuum lines that control air distribution. But the only way to confirm this, (and to see what else he chewed through), was to physically inspect the system. That meant the instrument panel had to be moved so I could access the HVAC components. I started by removing trim and the engine access cover.

Removing an instrument panel is an in depth job. But Ford does a decent job of making it a lot easier than it could be. I started by removing the lower trim pieces and engine cover.

I noticed something funny behind the passenger side kick panel trim.

The pair of broken wires seen in the photos above and below go to the right front door ajar switch. This meant that the GEM module, (which controls the courtesy lights based on whether or not a door is open), would never see the right front door as "open."

Based on where these wires are located, I couldn't say for sure that Mr. Squirrel was responsible for this. Either way, I repaired them.

After removing all of the necessary trim and dash mounted components, I unbolted the instrument panel from the body of the van and slid it back onto the front seats. Here is where Mr. Squirrel did a good bit of damage.

The debris seen in the photos above and below is part of the foam gasket that seals parts of the air distribution system.

Mr. Squirrel chewed through the foam gasket with ease. Also of note was the small yellow piece of debris seen in the photo above, which I'll get to in a minute.

The damaged foam gasket is attached to the air distribution ducting that is mounted to the instrument panel.

Air from the heater and a/c case is directed to various places depending on which position is selected, (i.e. heat, defrost, or dash vents). With the case being mounted to the body of the van and the ducting mounted to the instrument panel, a foam gasket is used to seal the gap between the two.

I started to remove the damaged gasket and found damage to the plastic heater and a/c case. Even though the damage looks significant, it wasn't actually a big problem because the foam gasket covers all of this.

I removed the damaged part of the foam gasket and replaced it with some thick foam gasket material.

Earlier, I mentioned the small piece of yellow debris I found when I first moved the instrument panel out of the way. I quickly discovered where it came from. The yellow vacuum line seen in the photos above and below is for the panel vent vacuum motor. With this line broken, the vacuum motor wasn't able to move which is why I had no air out of the dash vents.

I repaired the yellow vacuum line and discovered the red vacuum line seen in the photo above also broken. The red line feeds vacuum to the floor vents.

Even though this line wasn't completely broken, it was split enough to not allow full vacuum to reach the vacuum motor, which is why I didn't have any air out of the floor vents either. I repaired everything and reinstalled the instrument panel and verified that everything was working.