Ah, no CAF. That explains the crud, and explains why the manufacturers began using CAF.
6.5 hours, 10 hours – absolutely no ripoff. My usual estimate is that an experienced tech can do a job in half the book time, whereas it will take me double the book time. On this one, I can’t remember ever being young and enthusiastic enough to have tried it myself.
The CAF may help in that Camry, but I never have leaves on the ones in my Ford products. I’m thinking it depends on where the CAF is. I think mine are ‘downstream’ of the evaporator.
That depends . . .
His first time doing the job?
I doubt it
The fifth time doing the job?
Yeah, I could see that
Car owners can minimize the amount of leaf & dirt debris that gets into their car’s AC and vent system by occasionally shop vac’ing the fresh air intake grating, usually this is located directly below the windshield. I do it once or twice a month on my Corolla nd never had any trouble with debris jamming the blower. On my truck that job isn’t so easy to do b/c of how the fresh air intake hvac vents are configured, and I did later have a problem of debris accumulating in the vent system and causing problems. That required a lot of time and made a big mess to fix.