First off, hope this is the best place to put this post. Hope you can help!

I have a 2011 Honda Fit Base. 39k miles.
I took my Fit into the Honda dealer when I was given my maintenance minder. Tires rotated. Oil changed. All the required works. They also changed my air filter and cabin filter. As soon as I left, I turned on the heat. Now, I can hear the fans blowing when I turn on the fans. As I increase the fans, you can hear the fan motor rumbling. This is new. There is also a new plastic smell but I assume this is from the filters.

I took it back to Honda who said that replacing the air filter would not cause an issue with the fans. There may have been a miscommunication because I was under the impression that the cabin filter is near the heating/cooling fans (I may have just said "you replaced the filters" and they assumed I meant just air filter).

Is there a way to DIY check this? Is there a way to DIY fix this?

*Where is the cabin filter in a Honda Fit 2011?
*How do I check to see if the cabin filter is the issue?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
I'm a noob to car repair & my car-repair peeps don't typically work on Fit's. Thought I'd ask here for guidance before we start taking apart the car the wrong way.

 

DIY

Change A Honda Fit Cabin Filter | Scott'Soapbox

Next time just do it yourself and save a bunch of money. The dealership is a complete ripoff for both air filter and cabin. Both can be done in five minutes total.

Your car is under warranty or no? They should have double checked their work just out of good-faith either way. I hate dealerships.

 

I plan to do it myself next time!
The next day after I had the filters replaced, I took it back to the dealer and they refused to look under the hood to check my fans unless I paid a large diagnostic fee.

Are the cabin filter & air fans related? If they messed up my cabin filter, *could* it cause the fans' motor to have trouble?

Thanks for your input.

 

Geez, what assholes. You just paid a bunch of money to have them do a simple service and they can't take five minutes to look at your car? Customer service truly is dead. If they replaced the filter and now it's making a noise you'd think they'd take a sec to find out why.

I am not familiar with where the fan is located in the ducting on the car and if it's possible for debris to fall off the filter and onto the fan, but that's the only thing I could think of that would cause some noise. I assume the fan is behind the filter somewhere, so they are related.

Probably best to just take the cabin filter back out and poke around a little bit. Tell us what you see and feel back there.

 

Yeah very possible something fell into the fan area as Wanderer mentioned. If its still turning and just loud, probably a piece of paper or something like that that could've fell from your glove compartment when they were R/R your cabin filter. The "playing card on a bicycle spoke" kinda noise...

There's a section in your "Owners Manual" that shows you where the cabin filter is located.

Anyway here's a link to an IPB (Illustrated Parts Breakdown) I find most useful when looking for parts and parts location: HondaParsNow.com Parts List If the link doesn't work, just go to their website.

Good luck!

 

Thanks everyone for the help!!!!
Thanks to you guys, we were able to remove the cabin filter. Looks like it isn't the problem. We did not find a change in the noise when we removed the cabin filter. Looks like it's the fan and motor that are malfunctioning.