Banging noise, air conditioning?

[Flythedog]

My Qashqai is making an alarming banging noise which sometimes goes off if I switch the air supply off, not every time, but too often to be a coincidence. It is intermittent and sounds like it's coming from the right hand side of the glove box. I think i've narrowed it down to this gear type assembly in the picture, if you stick your head under the glove box and look to the side/bottom of the central console you can see this part, when it is making the noise I can see a very slight shudder in the bottom gear, like it's trying to turn but can't. It's obviously had red grease put on, don't know if this is meant to be like that. It does it when the air supply is switched on external air and recirculation and i think it even did it today when i hadn't even turned the air supply on. Any ideas??

[gloucester]

Welcome to this forum.

I missed your posting originally but haven't a clue as to an answer.