This happend to me once before. Here are the symptoms:
When the blower is on (AC or heat), as long as I’m driving in a straight line, no problem. However, if I apply brakes, or make a turn, I hear a “sound” (described below).
Happens only when the blower is on. At this point it’s sporadic (as before), but when it happened earlier, after several weeks of it, the blower died, and I had to have it replaced.
The GQ: I’m assuming it’s the blower fan that’s making the noise. Is this something that can be repaired beforehand or do I just have to wait until it dies?
Sound: Think the sound of a spinning metallic object making light contact with “something else.” Not a noisy, grinding noise. Just some kind of light contact.
From your description, I agree it’s a virtual certainty that the blower motor is starting to fail. The noise sounds like the blower fan blade (wheel) scraping inside its housing, due to play from a worn blower motor shaft or its bearings. There’s no halfway or temporary fix - the cure is to replace the blower motor. You don’t have to wait for total failure, you can replace it anytime you want to. The only advantage to waiting would be to get 100% certainty in the diagnosis, as opposed to the 99.99% certainty we have now.
I’ll third or fourth what Gary T et. al. have told you, having been down that road. The good news: blower motors are relatively cheap. The bad news: depending on your particular make and model, replacement could be a 15 minute barely-get-your-hands-dirty project, or a multi-hour sweaty swearing adventure. The latter is one I recall about a late 60’s/early 70’s Buick-I had to unbolt and drop the right inner fender and remove the right outer fender to access the blower motor. :eek: Thankfully, I was being paid for that task.
