We recently purchased an '87 740 GLE for our 16 year daughter for her first car. It starts great runs well however the fan, defrost and ac/heat does not work at all. The 30 amp fuse appears to be good. I did notice that the temp gauge hardly rises. Can anyone suggest where to start?

 

Get a book -Haynes is a good choice.
Under the right side kick panel is a ground point for several wires, wiggle and clean connections here. If you don't get any fan action after verifying the grounds, you'll have to check power at the fan.
The fan is relatively easy to remove, it sits behind the glove box. You must stand on your head and remove it from below.
A test light is all you'll need to sort this problem out. Search the archives for more info then see what you can see.
Ed

 

740's have a ground point on each side of the interior, behind the footwell covers, most stuff is grounded on the right side, but some of it is grounded on the left. there's also several ground points under the hood.

 

Thanks Ed7 and Pierce for your help. I am a bit of a novice when it comes to car repair so I bought a Haynes Repair manual and grabbed a friend we started checking the electrical connections beginning with the Heater Blower Motor. It made noises when you spun the cage so I guess the bearings were bad. After replacing the Blower Motor the fan speed only worked on the fastest setting and off. We checked more electrical connections and found the Heater Blower Motor Resister was bad. Actually one of the coils was broken. We replaced that as well. Now I have all fan speeds but there I can't adjust where the air is directed. It mostly blows air on the of top dash and less in the middle and floor. Also, it seems to take a while for the hot hot to get warm enough (note the temp gauge only gets a little more than 3/8 off "cold" after 15 min of driving with outside temp in upper 30s).

 

re: your engine not warming up, that likely is the thermostat in the engine coolant plumbing.

re: your ventilation air flaps, thats all vacuum actuated, there's a vacuum line from the intake manifold that goes to a 1-way valve and then through the firewall and connects to the ventilation controller on the dashboard. then there's a series of spaghetti lines behind the dashboard that go to each air flap to control it open or closed. if none of it is working, I suspect the main vacuum line into it.