I have an 01 Bonne SE with the manual climate control. The air volume doesn't seem to be very high. The fan is fairly loud when placed on high, low tone rumble sound. When I place it on recirculate the low tone rumble sound doubles in intensity. As I already said the volume of air doesn't seem to be as good as other cars I have owened, but this is a different car...?? Anyone ran into this before? Any ideas? This seems exesively loud.

The air noise in my 03 H body leSabre is higher than the earlier cars were. But I think you should look in the cabin air filter opening to see if your air filter is clogged, if you have one. And check with a flashlight looking at the squirrel cage fan that you can see when the air filter is out. The air filter is under a little snap down lid right in front of the passenger side of the windshield above the AC accumulator.

I found the cabin filter door and looked in there previously and there was NO filter installed... I guessed the previous owner pulled it out to get better air flow??? Any other ideas? Another thought I had was maybe the actuator that controled the direction of air but that seems to be working because when I push the buttons the air flow changes to the selected direction...???

Does'nt sound like a door acuator issue.
No filter? Could you have gottn leaves or other debris into the air inlet chamber?
Try vacuming it out, will need a narrow attachment to get down into there.

I've found that the air flow to the foot area is pretty weak. Flow through the defrost or vents is better. The noise could be the motor itself, although some have found that foreign material can make its way into the fan area, creating extra noise.

These all seem logical approaches. What I am not undersatanding is why the noise level would double (if not more than) when switched into Recirculate. What does Recirculate do? Close an outside vent? Why would that cause it to get so much louder. This is more noticeable than switching from AC to Max AC (which I think is closing an outside vent) on other cars I have owned.

Recirc is louder on my car too and yes it closes the fresh air intake and opens the cabin intake.

It must just be that the noise is not being allowed to escape from the vent compartment into the engine compartment then...?????

Try this, however it did not fix mine.
http://www.bonnevilleclub.com/forum/...&highlight=fan

WOW I opened the cabin filter cover and looked in with a light and there was a clump of insulation laying on top of the blower fan cage. No wonder it was making noise! I wonder how much insulation is trapped in the heater core??? I am going to try and pull the blower fan and then get a vacuum hose to the core to try and suck it out?????

Thanks for the tip on the insulation coming loose!!