1990 Legacy Heater/AC Blower Not Working

[Don]

The AC/heater blower on a friend's 1990 Legacy is not working. Figure it is
either the blower motor or speed resistor. Sometimes it will start working
after a time. I am hoping that is an indication of worn brushes and not an
intermittent short/open somewhere.


Couple of questions:

1) On the Legacy, is there a "usual culprit" when the blower stops working?

2) How easy is it to get to the blower?

3) Is there a blower speed resistor? If so, where is it located?

Any hints will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Don

 

[AS]

The resistor is located somewhere in the blower housing. It needs the
air to cool down.

The resistor is normally the problem when one or more blower speeds do
not work but the max speed continues working.

It could be the switch or the blower motor itself. Measure voltage at
the fan motor.

Good luck

 

[strchild]

Had a problem with the blower motor in my XT6. Previous owner had the motor
Mickey Moused to solve the problem so that at least speed four worked all of
the time, but I wanted all four speeds myself. Removed the jumper to frame
ground his mechanic had installed, tested the blower resistor and found all
three resistive paths to be working, traced the circuit back to the solenoid
in the dash behind the radio, found the circuit was not applying 12V when
switched as it should to the motor, so traced the circuit back to the
four-way speed selection switch and as it turns out, the ground from the
four way speed selector was coroded and worked about one out of every twenty
times you tried it, but in any speed, which was the confusing part.

The resistor is easy to get to from all the legacys I looked at in the
U-Pull it yard. In fact, I bought a donor blower resistor just in case, for
just a couple of bucks. The legacy unit is nicer, and doesn't usually fail
as the older GL / Loyale models did, but isn't exactly compatible with the
older cars. Once you remove the plastic cover below the glove box, above
where the passengers' feet rest, look for an approx. 1" x 2-1/2" bump of
plastic that attatches with two screws to bottom of the blower conduit, not
the blower motor itself. You should be able to tell it's there by the black
shrouded wire harness protruding from it (no, you probably won't see the
wires, just the flexible covering they're inside). Remove the two screws to
release the blower resistor, unplug the wire harness, and voila. The
resistor may be a bit fragile after all these years of use, so be careful to
pull it straight out and not bang the resistor pieces along the sides of the
opening it fits into, if it isn't shrouded as the newer ones are. Takes
longer to explain than to do. I joke with people about how easy my Subaru
blower equipment is to work on, versus their domestic jobbies. (-;

~Brian

 

[Don]

Problem solved!

Turned out to be a cold solder joint on the control connector of the switch
assembly. (There is another connector which has the wiring for the blower
motor.) Tore everything down. Noticed if I moved the control harness
connector (upper of the two connector on the console switch body) it would
work. Tore the switch unit down and resoldered the connector. Problem
solved!

 

[Joe Kultgen]

The AC/heater blower on a friend's 1990 Legacy is not working. Figure
it is either the blower motor or speed resistor. Sometimes it will
start working after a time. I am hoping that is an indication of worn
brushes and not an intermittent short/open somewhere.


Couple of questions:

1) On the Legacy, is there a "usual culprit" when the blower stops
working?

2) How easy is it to get to the blower?

3) Is there a blower speed resistor? If so, where is it located?

Any hints will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Don

If it stopped working completely it's probably either the fuse or blower
relay. Resistor problems usually cause a failure on one or more of the
lower speed settings while it will still function at full speed. The
fuse under the dash normally provides power to the switching side of the
blower relay while a fusible link in a box under the hood provides the
power the relay sends to the blower.

If the fuses are good you'll have to play "find the relay". The location
varies from year to year and model to model. The only place I've seen it
documented was the factory service manual.

Later,
Joe

 

[strchild]

I'm glad you were able to locate and fix your friend's blower troubles.
Nothing like a low cost solution, and it's only too bad that locating some
of the controls in the console can be so darn time consuming.

~Brian