What a horrible location Buick picked to put the interior air filter. I went through the extra effort of removing the lower dash trim on the right & left sides of the dash. The driver side didn't have to come off after all but I found out after the fact that removal was not necessary.
The filter is located between the firewall & Air box, inline with the center hump in the floor. You have to have the hands of a contortionist to get your hand above and to the right of the gas pedal. Flip a panel down then another one up and then pull a tab to pull the filter out.
I found out my blower motor is under the dash on the passenger side. Lots of spaghetti under there, wires running all over the place. I removed the lower right side of the dash trim just to look under there.
Both left & right lower dash trim pieces have three things that have to be removed from them in order to remove them out of the car, A air temp sensor twists out, a wire harness has to be unclipped and a second wire harness for the footwell lights have to be unplugged as well.
The owners manual doesn't explain filter removal procedures, but says to contact a GM dealer about replacement. It does say if you do remove it, it don't need to be reinstalled. You can leave it out but then the air coming in won't be filtered.
About 6 tiny oval leaves and a bamboo twig fell on the rug when I pulled the filter out. Part of the filter frame broke trying to get it back in. You really got to spring it to make the bend into the hole and clear the gas pedal. The frame is plastic and is notched out so it can be bent back & forth.
An airhose cleaned the filter out good. Mine is 3 inches high by about
10 inches long. You can almost see though it, its so thin.The Owners manual says to inspect the filter at 15,000 miles & replace every 30,000. Ha ha ha ! Not after what I went through today. I don't know what these fiters cost, but I've heard some vehicles filters were up around $30.00
I may eventually leave the interior air filter out altogether. Afterall I'm old school & all my previous cars didn't have one and 25 years of non filtered air didn't seem to be a problem for me back then or the millions of other folks driving GM cars.
A Goodwrench friend changed the original Gas Filter today, it took about two minutes to R & R the filter. Mine has the easy squeeze plastic clip on one end. It took longer to jack the car up & set the jackstand in place than it did to R & R the filter.
At 60,000 I'll change the gas filter myself.
Harryface
05 Park Avenue, 29,612 91 Bonneville LE 304,246