Photo Essay - Replacing The Blower Fan

[PhilMeUp]

Air conditioning and/or heater not working? Had enough of the squeaking sound when you’ve got the air conditioning or heater on?

That will be the blower fan, which is underneath the passenger side of the dashboard.

It’s not particularly had to replace - it’s just hard to access. You can pick up a secondhand blower fan from a Falcon wreck easily enough.

Start by removing the glovebox. Push the plastic tab and the glovebox will will be to move forward.



The glovebox will then rotate downward. Pull it upward and outward to unclip it from the dashboard.



While you’re there, check and clean the cabin filter tray. Slide it to the left and pull the tray toward you. Clean it with a brush or compressed air.

If your glovebox is full of junk then this is also a good time to empty it and clean it out with water and detergent. I wish I knew this last year, when a car of soft drink split open and made one hell of a mess in there. Remove the glovebox and rinsing it under a tap would have been easier than spending an hour with a sponge and bucket of water.



If you’ve never removed and cleaned the cabin filter tray then it’s worth doing occasionally. There is the option of fitting a cabin filter here - if you suffer from hay fever then you’ll want to look into this.



Then you get to try and remove the blower fan. If you’re small and nimble then it’s not too difficult. If you’re large and not nimble then it’s going to be uncomfortable.

You need to unplug the power cable. There is a plastic tab on the side to push in so that the cable will pull out. Above that cable is one of the three screws that will need to be removed.



You’ll need a short Philips head screwdriver. Everything I had for this task was too long, making it very difficult to access to screw closest to the firewall. I pulled the carpet up to try and get more vertical room for a screwdriver.



The heads on my screws were hard to grip. I’ll replace this another time so that the next time I need to replace the blower fan there will be new screws with undamaged heads.



After wrestling with screwdrivers not suitable for the job (ie too long), I finally got the blower fan out.



This photo shows two of the screws that you’ll need to remove. The third screw is above the plastic at the top of the photo.



A photo of one of the two plastic hooks that the glovebox sits on.



I took the previous photos a few months ago when I had to replace the blower fan in my taxi. Last night I did the same job with my ute.



The tray had various tree debris. If you don’t want to have to vacuum your car after doing this then put a towel or sheet on the floor so that you can capture anything that falls out of the tray as you remove it.



Another angle, showing the screw above where the cable plugs in.



I bought a short ratchet screwdriver from Bunnings, which helped get the job done.



To get one of the screws loose I had to pull the plastic bottom of the dashboard toward me a bit.



A photo of the bottom of a blower fan. The arrows show where the three screws go.



Where the power cable plugs in.



The other side of the bottom of the blower fan.



When I did this job the first time (ie my BFIII wagon taxi - the first half of the photos), the blower fan had completely stopped working.

For the BAII ute (the second half of the photos), the blower fan was making very irritating squeaking noises.

Both times, the problem was resolved after replacing the fan with a secondhand one.

[discostig]

Cheers Phil. Love your write ups. Probably be using many of them on my own car down the track and you use nice arrows in pics like I do when explaining things which helps the reader a lot.

Could you use a normal ratchet handle with adapters for screwdriver fittings on the end, that way it's a right angle and only a short distance?

["Captain Retard"]

I did this job a few months ago because the fan was squeaking.

I pulled the motor apart and put some grease on the bushes and it's been quiet ever since.

The bushes were very dry.

Good write up , I didn't realise you could access through the glovebox, I did mine from underneath.

[PhilMeUp]

Cheers Phil. Love your write ups. Probably be using many of them on my own car down the track and you use nice arrows in pics like I do when explaining things which helps the reader a lot.

Could you use a normal ratchet handle with adapters for screwdriver fittings on the end, that way it's a right angle and only a short distance?

Yep, that will work. It's all about undoing the three screws, but without enough room for a normal-length screwdriver.

Good write up , I didn't realise you could access through the glovebox, I did mine from underneath.

Removing the glovebox just gives easier access to the screws. I'll have to dig the old fan out of the bin and see if I can pull it apart and re-grease the bushes.

[sr71]

Thanks again Phil.

[humpy]

Brilliant write up,  on a slightly differnt tack, where the heck do I  go to replace the blower resistor  in a BF falcon.. pulled out  glovebox etc.. jsut cany see anything that looks like  the resister  anywhere !!