Broken blower motor?

[ThomasE30]

So I knew I needed a new blower motor resistor so I went ahead and bought one. Before installation, the only setting that worked was 4. Now 3 and 4 work but 1 and 2 don’t spin at all. It did it’s job but now I wonder if I should replace the motor itself and put the new resistor on that. When I installed the resistor, the fins and motor had a yellow and black sludgey grease all over it which I thought could be years of pollen and grease build up. Should i go ahead and order a blower motor off eBay?

[ZeKahr]

It sounds like you need a new blower motor. If your motor makes a squealing sound on 3 and 4, you definitely need a new motor. Spraying it liberally with electrical cleaner will help make it more tolerable but will not make the squealing completely go away. Working only on 3 and 4 indicates that the motor is caked up with 30 years of gunk, will require more current to spin, and therefore not work at the lower settings. Furthermore, I would advise you to avoid turning on the fan while you still have the old blower motor in the car; a worn blower motor can overheat your resistor and trip the safety fuse on the resistor (this happened to me); your fan will go back to only working on 4 again and then you either need a new resistor or need to fix the fuse on your current one.

[ThomasE30]

It sounds like you need a new blower motor. If your motor makes a squealing sound on 3 and 4, you definitely need a new motor. Spraying it liberally with electrical cleaner will help make it more tolerable but will not make the squealing completely go away. Working only on 3 and 4 indicates that the motor is caked up with 30 years of gunk, will require more current to spin, and therefore not work at the lower settings. Furthermore, I would advise you to avoid turning on the fan while you still have the old blower motor in the car; a worn blower motor can overheat your resistor and trip the safety fuse on the resistor (this happened to me); your fan will go back to only working on 4 again and then you either need a new resistor or need to fix the fuse on your current one.

Thank you! I will go ahead and buy the new motor. Just the answer I needed.

[E30Bastard]

I've got one you can have for free made by "Topaz". The German-made aftermarket brand is ACM and this is the one recommended by Blunt, etc.

[ThomasE30]

I've got one you can have for free made by "Topaz". The German-made aftermarket brand is ACM and this is the one recommended by Blunt, etc.

Lol I think I bought the same one on eBay 😂if I would’ve seen this earlier I would’ve got it from you. The one I got though works great. It definitely was the blower motor. AC needs to be recharged now but the straight air actually doesn’t blow cold air that bad. It felt nice finally fixing something wrong with the car. I should’ve let the air blow out all the dust and little tiny pebbles that were sitting in the vents cause I got peppered when I turned it on but other than that it works great. And trust me when I saw the old blower motor looked like someone threw tar on it. 35 years of pollen and grease/ gunk build up just caked the whole system. I also finally realized how to use the defroster system for the front windows when I took a look at the label. Old cars are so simple but ingenious