94 Ranger Blower Motor Troubles

[ctgriffi]

(Just typed all this in and hit "submit," only to discover that my login had expired. Starting over...)

A few years ago, the blower motor in my 94 Supercab Ranger (2WD, AT, 4.0) started giving me trouble: For the most part, it was just fine, but occasionally it would refuse to come on at all, no matter whether you switched it to low/med/high. Thumping on the right-hand side of the dash would seem to get it going sometimes. Other times, driving over a big bump in the road would start it blowing again. 95% of the time it was fine, but that pesky 5% was a real pain when you needed the AC or heat!

So, a year ago, I removed the blower motor and tested it directly w/12v, and it worked like a charm. I also replaced the blower motor resistor with a new part and vacuumed out a bunch of leaves and junk where that resistor "lives." After this, it worked great and never had any problems...'til this week. Once again, it's not wanting to come on occasionally, and then a bump in the road will usually activate it. One other thing: if it's on and running it will never stop running; the only time the problem occurs is when the blower is off and you're trying to turn it on.

Sorry if this post is redundant or has too much detail, but I'd really like to get to the bottom of this. Thanks for any help!

 

[Terry]

That stupid resistor has given me trouble from when I first got my truck. The first one started the leaves on fire. I lost two more and half of the ones that I pulled out pick and pull were bad too. I was replacing it last weekend and I turned it on and like it usually does when its bad the thing would only work in high. I got out and looked to see that it will run on high with the resistor not even hooked up. I removed the resistor and turned on the heater and it blew most of the leaves out of the housing. I used a screwdriver to loosen the rest of the leaves. Seems to me that you could disconnect the resistor wires and run it like that and see if you still have issues. If it does the wires that come straight to the motor have a bad connection. I would chase the ground wire down first from the motor as that most problems are ground related. The way you describe it sounds like a weak wire connection to me.

 

[ctgriffi]

Thanks, Terry. I'll take a look at the wiring and see what I can find. I think I've got a wiring chart in the back of the repair manual. It's just a hard thing to track down because it doesn't stay one way or the other...

 

[Andy D]

I used to have this trouble in my Grand Wagoneers. The blower was easy to take out. I took apart the motor , greased the bearings and freed up the brushes. I dunno if the Ranger blower is fixable. If not, you can prolly get a new one for around 50$

 

[ctgriffi]

Yeah, I almost replaced the blower motor one time, but I couldn't find anything wrong with the old one. Plus, the local auto part stores only had "universal" motors, and I didn't want to cut the harness apart and wire it up all ghetto...

 

[Andy D]

Yeah, I almost replaced the blower motor one time, but I couldn't find anything wrong with the old one. Plus, the local auto part stores only had "universal" motors, and I didn't want to cut the harness apart and wire it up all ghetto...

What I do in that situation is to cut the wires and plug off the bad blower. Butt splice or solder the pieces together. It is better to bodge the connection to the unit rather than cutting the harness.