406 clicking noise

The dealer is wrong. It is the motor that opens/closes the recirculation flap. It has stripped its gears. You can get to it by removing the glove box (remove the hinge pin either side underneath) and then removing the black plate behind it. The motor is to the right and is held in by two phillips type screws on opposite corners (it is also out of sight so you work by feel, laying on your back on the floor - or if you are lucky like me your son-in-law does). New ones are quite pricey so I have simply left the motor off with the flap open. I only ever used it when a smelly exhaust was in front. There have been many other posts on this subject, search in Google Groups under recirculation motor.

Keith

The dealer is not correct (Again) - this clicking noise is almost certainly the air recirculation flap servo. You can test this by removing the pollen filter from behind the firewall under the bonnet and looking down, if the servo is ok then you should see a flap moving as somebody presses the recirc button.

I had the same problem on my 'r' reg 406 and have chosen to remove the whole servo as replacement was around 80quid.

Andy

I think we are talking about the same thing, I called it a motor and you call it a servo. We both took the same course of action. As a point of interest there are two versions of the motor and the earlier one is more like £120. There is also a difference between the motor on the standard air conditioning, which mine is, and the automatic air conditioning (climate control) so there are probably four different motors in total.

Keith

Keith, WOW - what a complicated scenario just for a little servo motor... Well done again Peugeot. I call it a servo, because... well, it is really; It is a motor with gearing and load sensor. It's not the motor that has gone on mine, it's the big white plastic gear inside the servo housing, the motor has completely stripped it of teeth. When I bench tested the little blighter it took a heck of a strong load on the motor before cutting out, I suspect this is the reason the gears strip so readily - too much torque.

Andy

Thanks for all of the replies. Given the cost and complexity of a repair, is there a SIMPLE way of disconnecting the motor/servo as I think that we can live without it.

Raymond

There is a plug a little further back, feel along the wire from the motor and you will come to it. It has to be unplugged anyway if you want to remove the motor. It is not easy to get out because it has a mounting that also has to be slid out of the bracket, but my son-in-law managed it by using brute force and ignorance. The cable is about 7 inches long. Further to Andy's reply. There is a small electronic device in the motor housing and I wondered whether it was designed to sense the increased load when the flap reaches the end of its travel and cut the power. If that is true, and it fails, the motor would just carry on going with the result that we have both seen.

I said that there were two types of motor. I took pictures of my original and a replacement that I had to return (wrong one), you can see the pics here:

Keith, Mine looks like your original one, I notice the electrical connector is different as well.

Andy

The connector is different and so are the wire colours so I could not even try the replacement out. It came by post from a breakers in Norfolk, they were very good and gave me a complete refund, even postage. I was actually quoted £120 by a Pug agent just to buy it. Did you notice the verbose Haynes name for it?If Raymond is still following this a search on Google Groups on "recirculation motor" should bring up the original posts in which Nigel gave very clear instructions on handling this.

Keith