cheap mod: blower intake filter screen

[treed2@u.washington.edu (T. Reed)]

Okay, so this might not appeal to anyone else, but I've been having a lot
of trouble lately with crap getting in my rain tray and blowing in to my
eyes while I'm driving. This is not only annoying, it's dangerous.
Specifically there's this blooming tree where I frequently park and no
matter what season it is it just craps little brown or white things
everywhere.

When I get in the car and turn on the blower, I get a faceful of tree
dandruff, and it gets all over my interior, making vacuuming it all up
later on an annoying chore. Also big leaves get sucked in somehow and I
have had to pick them out piece by piece from the inside of my air vents
because they start resonating in the air stream and making an annoying
bzzzz noise.

So last weekend my frustration boiled over and I tracked down some screen
door material and cut out a 125mm x 227mm rectangle of it. Then I cut some
5/16" wide by 120mm long by ~2mm thick "bars" of plastic, taped them to
the end of the screen door material and rolled them over a couple times so
that friction would be holding the screen in place rather than the weak
tape.

I tucked the upper end under the lip between two halves of the blower box
and fastened the lower one in place by poking small zip ties through the
mesh material in strategically placed holes and tightening them around a
large zip tie "chin strap" that I ran around the blower housing.

Here's a photo so you can try to make sense of my description:

http://students.washington.edu/treed2/screen.jpg

It's not "pretty" but it gets the job done. Airflow isn't noticably
reduced, which was one of my concerns. It's not a 100% seal, either.. but
who cares. I'm just trying to keep sesame seed sized and larger debris out
of my ventilation system, I don't need an electrostatic filter..

I'm also thinking about putting some sort of finer screen over the
openings in the hood, since that seems to be where the crap that gets
sucked in is originating from.

Anyway, just a minor thing.. but I thought someone else might be
interested for safety reasons. "Ow! My eye!"

-Toby