I have an '07 Corolla, and recently the AC/Heat Blower has been working intermittently. Usually when I get in the car the fan won’t blow at all, but if I leave it set to on for a few minutes it will come on. I’ve noticed that it seems to come on when I get on the highway if I have the vents open (maybe the airflow is helping it get going?).
Anyway, I’m thinking I need a new blower, but I don’t wanna have to pay what will probably be $300 to get it replaced. I’m fairly mechanically inclined and I can get a new blower for about $80. Does anyone have experience with such things? Is it something I can do myself without any special tools?
I’d still take it in and pitch a fit. There’s no relation between mileage and blower motor lifespan, is there? It’s not like you’d be asking them to replace the transmission for free. Tell them you expect at a bare minimum 50% off the cost of the part.
The problem is that the dealer at which I bought the car is no longer near anywhere that I go. It’d take me a 2 hour round trip plus however long it takes them to fix it, plus the headache of arguing. I’d rather just spend the $80 and what seems like will be 20 minutes.
Are you sure it’s the blower that’s at fault? An intermittent problem could be no more than a bad connection - a plug not fully seated, a wire not properly crimped into a connector pin, etc.
The great majority of the time, intermittent blower operation is due to a faulty blower motor. Sometimes you can get confirmation with the whackit test - with the ignition on and the blower turned on but not running, give the blower motor case a good thump. If it starts running, it’s a bad motor. If it doesn’t start running, nothing has been proven one way or the other.
Chances are that what’s been happening while driving is that it’s getting jarred by normal road bumps and then comes on, or sometimes does get a boost from airflow on the highway.
While a blower switch or blower resistor fault aren’t out of the question, they’re quite unlikely. I don’t recall ever seeing a resistor give intermittent operation - usually it just loses one fan speed at a time. While switches can be intermittent, it’s usually fiddling with the knob that makes it work. A poor wiring connection, while again not impossible, is very rare on these cars, unless someone had a connector off and didn’t reattach it properly.
Thanks! Yeah, like I said it comes on randomly while I’m driving, if I have the switch on. Fiddling with the speed switch does nothing. I forgot to mention that for a few months now I can hear the fan rattling occasionally, which sounded to me like the same sound a computer CPU fan makes before it dies. I am going to take the current blower out this weekend and see if I can see anything immediately wrong with it and order a new one if I can’t.
Boy, I have NEVER seen a failed blower motor. I would tend to think something in the switch, fan coltrol, or wiring. A DC motor is a pretty reliable component-test it by jumping it to the battery.
I’ve seen plenty of them, and more failed motors than switches or resistors (of course, I’ve seen plenty of those as well). Wiring it up direct is of limited value - if it runs, it doesn’t mean it’s good. When motors are going bad they sometimes work, sometimes don’t. It’s not a bad idea, though, to test the power and ground to the motor with a test light. If it has power and ground and isn’t running, it’s bad.