2012 prius, 250K. My wife noticed that there was no heat coming out of the vents in the passenger footwell. Pretty cold right now, so some heat for her would be nice. I am also pretty sure that there is no heat out of the vent below the passenger seat. There is definitely heat out of the driver one. This is true on mixed modes, as well as the mode with only sending heat to the feet. I have not tried it on re circulation. Any ideas? I have had the car for less than 2 years, and this issue may have been present at that time I just did not notice.
Which picture? I was suspecting doors as well, is there one that directs to the passenger front and back, and one to the driver front and back? I suspected that there would be a single door that directs to both rear floors, and since the driver side is OK that would mean a blockage. I would love to see some good diagrams of where the doors are and how they work. I have a "Factory Service Manual" in PDF, but we all know how hard those can be to work with.
from the way it works, it would seem that there is only one door for the floor, but i could be wrong. can't think of what else would block one side, maybe a partially open door? i would turnthe fan and heat all the way up on manual, put the setting to floor only and feel inside the outlet for obstructions
I used a scope to look up the vent for the passenger floor, and did not see anything amiss (no nests) I may try scoping with the heat on, but it can be hard to know what you are looking at with a scope sometimes.
I did end up scoping the vents from both sides while running, and at this point I have concluded: More air hits the driver because they are opposite the blower. There is no active way to deflect air towards the foot of the passenger. The duct runs from one foot well to the other, and though the air enters the duct in the center, the movement of air is coming from the right side, not straight on. This means that the person to the right gets very little of it.
I didn't realize this was a gen 3 most of the events in the Gen 3 just pull off the floor and pull out of the dash if you suspect a blockage they're probably is a blockage where a mouse was in there with some debris trying to make a nest and that would quickly block off some of these small ducks pretty quickly but accessing that duct work with like a coat hanger with a bench hook on the end of it should be pretty easy. Then you can run the wire up in the duct work that goes to the floor on the side you're worried with and see if you can pull anything through the ductwork the back seat same thing flip the front seat forward and look down on the floor and run your coat hanger right up into the vent and swish it around and pull it out and see if you pull anything with it and also use your shot back with some creative pieces of foam and things would be interesting to see what you find. I've had some mice in and out of the two generations threes that were here for quite a few years they actually were gathering material to make nests I guess not in the car they were trying to take the material with them
