Blower stopped working today

[dmac156]

The blower in my '04 stopped working today. It is completely dead. I swapped out the 2 fuses and the relay that could have been bad, and they had no effect. If I turn the fan switch I hear a click in the relay behind the dash when the switch is on high. It sounds like it could be the resistor. I have the relay and the resistor out of the car now. Is there any way to test them to see if they are bad? Is there anything else it could be besides the blower itself?

It doesn't seem like something like this should go out at 4 years and 50K miles.....

 

[BrooklynBay]

Welcome to this forum! You could test the motor directly on the battery. The resistor could be tested with a multimeter. Use a test light on the connector to see if there is power when you turn on the blower switch.

 

[XtremeRanger]

Yeah just take a pair of test leads and hook it directly to the battery....word of advice....hold on to it TIGHT they are torqy lil things and if you happen to break the top of it then itll be out of balance....

 

[dmac156]

I think it's the blower motor

I have tried several things, and they are all pointing to the blower motor. If measure voltage that the plug that goes into the motor ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmacflikr/2974497429/ ) I get voltage any time the control switch is not in the off position. So I hooked up a battery to the motor, on these leads: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmacflikr/2975349900/ ) and nothing happened. Could a blower motor really go bad in 4 years? Am I missing anything? I don't have a schematic (I didn't really plan to be working on a 4 year old car.....I have other cars that I do work on....), is there anything else that needs to trip in order for the blower motor to turn on, or is it simply pwr and gnd?

The next question is how big of a job changing the blower motor is, and how much it will cost.

 

[dmac156]

update: FM

Here's the update. I pulled the blower motor and fan. It was only 4 bolts, and relatively easy to access under the dash. I took the motor over to my workbench and decided to hook it up one more time to the battery now that it was completely isolated from the car. At first nothing happened, then as I was about to disconnect the battery I noticed that it was starting to spin. So I kept the leads hooked up and it continued spinning faster. I brought it back to the car, and just hooked up the connector and it started working perfectly. I checked around the inside of the housing to see if something had mechanically prevented the fan from spinning, and did not find anything.

I put the motor back in the car and everything is working fine. What was wrong? I have no idea, but it wasn't working before, it's working now, and it didn't cost any $$.

 

[BrooklynBay]

Thanks for the update! Sometimes corrosion could cause problems. Clean the contacts of the blower motor, and the connector with an electrical contact cleaner, and use an antioxidant gel. You could get this in Home Depot, any auto parts store or hardware store. It's looks similar to what they put inside of light bulb sockets.

 

[XtremeRanger]

prolly just a bad connection, kudos for fixen it yourself!