Yesterday evening, my blower fan died suddenly and totally at a stop sign. It never came back, even for a short visit... I scanned the climate control computer with my VIDA/DICE unit, and saw that the car had indeed stored a fan issue (low signal, as I recall). I checked the voltage on both of the smaller control wires. Thanks to prior problems with my radiator fan, I had a general idea of what to look for. In this case, one of the terminals (the one that reports the status of the fan back to the CC computer) reads pretty close to ground, with no real voltage. The other wire moves between 0-6 volts DC as I moved the fan control from full off to full on (give or take - I just made sure I was seeing the voltmeter move, which reflects the effects of the square-wave computer signal that drives the controller). Sounds like a bad fan to me!

I went through the suggested procedure to get the fan out (pull the right kick panel, pull a trim panel under the dash, and one on the console, pull the glovebox out, pull off a couple drain hoses and drop the fan out by removing five screws (one of which is a little tricky to get to - I used a Harbor Freight angle screwdriver ratchet and a Torx bit, which worked like a dream). The only bad info I got from VIDA was that it claimed 10 screws held in the glovebox, when it was only 8 (on my car, at least).

Pulled out the fan motor (probably 20 minutes later) and re-connected it to its wiring harness. The fan started twitching and grumbling, and a nice, solid thwack (technical term) on the side had it kinda/sorta running. But it was making grinding noises, and was cutting in and out intermittently. I'm 99.9% certain that the bearings are gone, and that the play is causing the motor's internal connections to go intermittent. I was just a little shocked that it worked so well for so long, and then stopped all at once.

Anyway, about $90 later, I have a brand new motor / fan on the way via Amazon.com (using the wife's prime account to get a shipping discount), overnight. Autozone wanted $200 plus tax, and I didn't even want to see what the stealership was going to price theirs at! I wasn't interested in pulling a junkyard part because it would be a fair bit of extra work, and my luck I'd get one that was on its last legs.

I'm assuming I'll have to tear down the old fan unit to re-use the resistor and the control circuitry. I'll post an update when I've got the new fan in place, hopefully with good results. This post is more for those looking for information in the future than anything else... but feel free to chime in with your experiences, or helpful hints on installing the new motor.

 

I don't know why, but my mechanical jobs are seldom as easy as they ought to be... ;-)

I got the new motor next day delivery, and spent a good 3 or 4 minutes disassembling the old motor and putting the control unit on the new motor. Don't be at ALL put off by this process - it's a piece of cake... easily 10x easier than getting the old fan out or in of the car. Just make sure that the problem is the motor and not the resistor or control unit (both can fail).

Anyway, I got it all together, and plugged it into the wiring harness just to make sure it works. Turned on the ignition and... no lights on my climate control functions. At all. Dead as a door nail. It was working 100% fine when I turned the car off after doing the testing on the fan, and the car wasn't disturbed in between. Argh....

I did a quick search on the forum and saw several scary things, including that if the CCM (Climate Control Module) is bad, it's $1000 from the stealership (fat chance!) or $50-100 from a junkyard, but THEN you get to go pay the stealership $100-150 to program it to work in your car. Ouch.

I also saw some posts about a thermister that fails (a fair pain to change, but I'm an electronics guy by training), and how some folks had reset their CCM by disconnecting the battery.

So, being lazy, I disconnected my battery (discovering that it is an Optima Red Top battery... never had the cover off previously), and THEN shorted the positive to negative terminal (this drains any residual voltage from the system to make sure that all the electronics go to their "resting state").

Reconnected the battery, turned on the key, and was greeted by a glorious set of lights from my climate control section... back to 100%. The new fan ran perfectly through all speeds, and installing it and buttoning up the car was pretty easy.

I read in other posts about replacing the fan how difficult that "one screw" was to get out (or in). It was trivial for me, thanks to an angle screwdriver that I bought from Harbor Freight for $2-3. It holds a 1/4" hex bit, so I just put in the appropriate Torx bit (a T20, I think) and took out the screw. I'd recommend adding one of these to your toolbox... great, cheap tool that will make lots of jobs easier.

 

Thanks for the write up. I had my fan blower motor out last November to lube the bearing with some lithium spray (blower motor started to squeal prior winter when temps got really cold). Seems to have worked. I had a small 1/4" drive ratchet screw driver to get the T-20 torx in but, that rear screw was still a bear. I'll have to add that little one to my HF shopping list next time I am there.

I did disconnect the battery before doing this work and read on this forum you always want to let the car sit for 15-30 mins after engine shut down to let all the electronics "go to sleep" before disconnecting battery or starting any electrical work. Horror stories included ones like yours, sunroofs that no longer work or power door locks that wouldn't work. Glad to hear you were able to get it reset.

Bob

 

I didn't install back that rear screw. As for the squealing, it's the upper bearing that is not accessible unless the blower wheel is removed from the rod which takes a small puller.