Mine was doing this too, with the cabin filter removed, could feel that squirrel cage fan extremely close to the shroud on top. Dropped the blower motor, not hard on this thing and glued on washers between where the blower motor mates with the housing to drop that cage a couple of mm, solved this problem. Reason for gluing, those washers would fall off.
Seemed to be a better solution than not using top speed. Didn't come this way, started around 30K miles or so. Other little problem under the windshield cowl are too wide openings on either side where debris or even a mouse can enter. Used some of that plastic rain gutter mess, about quarter inch squares with hot glue, to keep this bigger stuff out.
Made it very easy to remove that plastic cowl, held in by those push pin rivets, and old stuff, screws would be rusted and break off. Have to remove the wipers first, but already used a small amount of anti-seize when it was new, came right off. Call this post production work.
