1996 850 Turbo - Blower not blowing

maccampbellsm · Post by **maccampbellsm** » 19 Jan 2015, 18:37

We'll I've had this car for almost two years and we are still going!

The blower motor stopped working in the span of about two months, then not at all. At first it was an intermittent failure at any fan speed, then stopped altogether. Makes it pretty hard to see here in Michigan when the weather gets (WAY) below freezing.

My first inclination was the switch, but then reading I see the resistor may be the problem. The blower it self never got loud or weird sounding.

What is the best troubleshooting method for this?

And thanks for everything!

Post by **oragex** » 19 Jan 2015, 18:42

How many miles on the car? Maybe the motor brushes have worn out? I've heard the resistor will fail all of a sudden.

maccampbellsm · Post by **maccampbellsm** » 19 Jan 2015, 18:43

178,000 miles.

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 19 Jan 2015, 18:45

Is this the electronic climate control or the manual climate control? The ECC has the temperature graduated in actual degrees and the manual is scaled with red bars that vary in width. The ECC also has AUT settings and the MCC does not.

The testing procedure differs depending on which unit you have.

...Lee

maccampbellsm · Post by **maccampbellsm** » 19 Jan 2015, 18:50

Ozark Lee wrote:Is this the electronic climate control or the manual climate control? The ECC has the temperature graduated in actual degrees and the manual is scaled with red bars that vary in width. The ECC also has AUT settings and the MCC does not.

The testing procedure differs depending on which unit you have.

...Lee

It must be the ECC because the highest temp on the dials are 84 degrees, plus I can set it to "AUT".

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 19 Jan 2015, 19:34

The way to test the motor on the ECC is to remove the connector from the power stage (blower resistor) that has the largish blue and black wires going to it. Simply short those two wires together and the blower should come on at full speed. The blower draws a fair amount of current and a small wire will overheat pretty quickly. If you keep the testing to a few seconds there shouldn't be a problem though.

If the blower doesn't run then the blower itself is bad.

If that test is passed then you either have a bad controller or a bad power stage and you really need to read the error codes from the controller to figure out which is bad. A flash code reader plugged into the OBD-II port will give you the codes.

Obd i led code reader diy instructions

Once you read the codes post the numbers back and we will help you sort it out. The climate units are like an elephant and they never forget any code they have ever posted until the codes are cleared. There may be a number of old legacy codes stored so read and record all of the codes and then erase them. Restart the car as normal and then read them again. The second reading should yield current, relevant, information.

...Lee