How to replace blower motor and blower motor resistor (2,000th post!)

[exbass94]

Difficulty: 2 out of 10

Time to complete: about 1 hour


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For my 2,000th post I decided to post something (hopefully) useful to others. Lately, I've been getting this annoying sound whenever I turned on the A/C. I figured a leaf probably got caught in the blower motor housing and was rubbing against the fan. So, I pulled the blower motor out to investigate. (I was right) I also needed to pull the blower motor resistor in order to do this, (not necessarily necessary ) so that is also covered. This covers models with the 4.0 SOHC. It may be the same procedure for other engines, or at least very similar, but I'm not sure exactly which. If I could find my Hayne's book, I could find out. But until then...oh well here it is.

Tools needed:
Ratchet (preferably 1/4" drive)
Metric and standard sockets
Long extension

Parts needed:
Blower motor and/or blower motor resistor, if replacing.
If you're simply cleaning debris from the housing like me, then none.

Procedure:
As you can see, the cruise control servo and the windshield washer/coolant reservoir tanks are in the way and prevent the blower motor from coming out. So, they need to be unbolted and moved out of the way.

To remove the cruise sontrol servo, remove the bolt (10 mm) on the fender and just set the servo to the side.

You can now access one of the nuts holding the tanks in (7/16").

Remove two more screws (10 mm) holding the tanks in

At this point, there is only one more nut holding the tanks in place (yellow circle).

To remove this, you need to remove the air box. Start by removing the cover over the throttle body. Remove the three screws (7 mm) holding it in.

Loosen the hose clamp on the throttle body using either a screwdriver or a 5/16" socket.

Disconnect the breather hose (green circle), MAF sensor (yellow circle), and the clip that holds the MAF wire harness (blue circle).

Un-latch the clips on the airbox, and remove the upper half of the airbox and intake tube as an assembly. Also remove the air filter. At this point, only the lower half of the airbox should be left.

Now, remove the lower half of the airbox by grabbing it by the right hand side (closest to the engine) and pulling up. There are two studs that fit into rubber grommets on the inner fender, and you need to pull them out. After you get them out, there are two more studs on the left hand side of the airbox. So, pull the airbox to the right to get them out. To give you an idea of how the airbox is secured, look at the photo below. You may need to pull HARD to get that sucker out.

Now you finally have access to that last nut holding the tanks in.

Disconnect the wire harness to the windshield washer motor and set the tanks aside. Now you finally have access to the blower motor and the resistor. To remove the blower motor, you must first either disconnect the wire harness going to the resistor, or unbolt the resistor and move it aside. I found it easier to unbolt the resistor and move it aside. It is located here:

There are two bolts holding it in. Once you get it out, it will look like this:

Now unbolt the four bolts holding the blower motor in. Disconnect the wire harness and unplug the vent tube.

There's the source of that annoying noise!

And, as the Hayne's book always says, installation is the reverse of removal. Hope this helps, and here's to another 2,000 posts!