A couple years ago the main blower on my 2006 HSE suddenly stopped working while I was driving and was accompanied by an unpleasant smell that reminded me of dust sizzling on hot wirings. As I was on a dirt road in the middle of the desert on a 107 degree day, I tried everything I could think of to restart (turning the climate system on and off, turning the truck on and off, banging on the blower itself, etc.) and thankfully eventually it kicked back on like nothing had happened. The next day I installed an aftermarket Continental blower just to eliminate the chance that this might happen again and for the next four years, it didn't.

About three months ago the blower freeze problem returned. This time I knew the workaround: Drop the lower glove compartment and lightly tap the blower motor housing (especially the top half) with a hammer and it'll get going again. No bearing noise, no clear sign of the fan conflicting with the housing, no electrical smell. It's only happening intermittently of late and because I've got the drop-the-box-and-tap thing down pat, it hasn't been a high priority issue. I figured I'd buy another blower and just keep it in the back of the truck for either a day when I had nothing else to do, or when we were traveling and I found a spot with shade to do the R&R while I listened to my beloved ask me why I didn't do this fix before we left on vacation. But when it happened yesterday, this time I knew that something was wrong before the blower stopped moving (normally it's just when I noticed there wasn't any cool air coming out that I realized the blower had seized). On this occasion my wife and I could hear the fan speed decrease at a very, very slow rate, almost as if someone was controlling a rheostat and taking a lot of trouble to shut the blower down as slowly and as smoothly as possible. In other words, it wasn't stopping like you would expect if it lost all electrical power (that would be almost instantaneous), it wasn't making contact noises between the spinning parts and the housing, and there were no bearing sounds.

Another tap from the hammer got it spinning at full speed again, but the way it died this time made me think that perhaps the issue wouldn't be fixed just by a new blower, but now a new controller of some kind would be needed as well. Has anyone had a blower issue like this, one in which multiple blowers seem to die in a relatively short time, where banging on the housing brings temporary relief, and the reduction of fan speed to zero is a gradual thing? And if so, what did you replace\do to address the problem?

Thanks,

Nick in Palm Springs