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I read this somewhere and had the same problem in my 2000 Impala, the HVAC fan motor squealed for the longest time but still worked. I have been a little spoiled by having a working AM/FM/CD/Cassette unit from the factory so everyone in the famile could listen to something if they wanted to.
UNTIL. . . the motor started squealing on every speed and wouldn't quiet down for anything, meaning I would have to: repair it?, replace it?, or live with it and the family would hate me for the remainder of time it took to do either of the above mentioned solutions.
Local auto parts suppliers had this fan motor with squirrel cage factory installed only, in a price ranging from $99.95 to $238.99, and with the recent layoff I opted out of solutions 2 and 3 completely, as it was GOING to be quiet, and it WASN'T going to cost me anything, much, if at all.
Back to solution 1, I had heard of a fix for this problem on another forum I belong to, NAIOA.com (North American Impala Owners Association, for the W-body Impala and all of it's good AND bad points), and after reading an old post there decided it was well within my abilities.
The panel below the glove compartment has to be removed, there are 2 quick release clips, and 1 christmas tree style push style retainer that needs a little encouragement to remove but isn't difficult.
Remove the clip holding the wire harness that runs along the left side of the blower motor (clip too) and the connector that juts out of this harness and connects to some unit on the firewall that you can hardly see, and remove the connector from the blower motor itsself, and disconnect the motor housing cooling tube too.
There are three screws holding this motor to the HVAC system air box, once these are removed (they are quite small standard size and requirea 1/4 inch ratchet and a 2 inch extension or a deepwell socket), you can finesse the motor and squirrel cage out of the air box.
This part is done. The next part is the time consuming part.
I have the luxury of having a variable power supply that allows the use of 30 amp's of power from 0 to 20 volts, and this helped me out A LOT!
I found that the housing end cap holds the bearing, and that bearing also supports the entire shaft of the motor and squirrel cage assembly along with all their combined weight, the bearing is the part that is making that awful noise, and it is NOT sealed from the factory resulting in you being able to see the end of that shaft and a small portion of the bearing.
I laid the motor and squirrel cage assembly with this opening facing up on my desk here next to the power supply, and rigged up a simple pair of wires and connectors to allow the fan to be run to be assured this was the problematic part and also to aid in lubrication.
I slowly applied enough WD-40 (any other penetrating lubricant will work too) to the shaft and bearing opening and allowed it to soak in for a while, and reapplied several dozen times in the next couple of hours, occasionally running the fan by applying 13.8 volts and quickly turning it down to a minimum, as this motor wants around 18 amps at 13.8 volts (resulting in many layers of paper blowing off from my desk), and quickly finding out that when the voltage is reduced the amperage is also drastically reduced too.
I found that this motor (out of wierd Amateur Radio operators' curiousity) will actually run off from a standard 9-volt battery too! Don't ask why I even tried because I don't really know either.
The motor needs the small area filled with lubricant (I used blue snowplow hydraulic fluid for the main lubricant but any light oil could also be used too, and after filling the little space, ran the motor, and repeated this several times over the next couple of hours until it wouldn't make any noise and was able to start the motor turning from a complete stop with only 1.5 volts and only about 2 amps, where I had to apply the full 13.8 when I began this venture.
I made sure to turn the motor assembly in EVERY direction and orientation I could while it was running to make sure the lubricant was getting everywhere it could.
When all this was done I had applied about 10 or so drops of WD-40, and probably 15-20 drops of hydraulic oil to the shaft and bearing. I have not seen any come back out and it's been back in service for a half a day now.
Re-installation of the motor and squirrel cage is just the reverse of removal, and you should be able to tell a 100% difference in the noise level, if not, I have no idea here but it worked for me.
Just in case you want to replace the motor and don't want to pay the prices in the range I listed above, and go to the local junkyard or auto recycler, here is a list of cross reference vehicles this motor fits according to all of the sources I checked.
Buick: 97-04 Century, & 97-03 Regal.
Chevrolet: 97-04 Corvette, 00-03 Monte Carlo, 00-03 Impala, & 97-03 Venture.
Oldsmobile: 1996 Cutlass Supreme, 97-00 Silhouette, & 98-02 Intrigue.
Pontiac: 97-03 Grand Priz, 97-98 Trans Sport, & 99-00 Montana.
UNTIL. . . the motor started squealing on every speed and wouldn't quiet down for anything, meaning I would have to: repair it?, replace it?, or live with it and the family would hate me for the remainder of time it took to do either of the above mentioned solutions.
Local auto parts suppliers had this fan motor with squirrel cage factory installed only, in a price ranging from $99.95 to $238.99, and with the recent layoff I opted out of solutions 2 and 3 completely, as it was GOING to be quiet, and it WASN'T going to cost me anything, much, if at all.
Back to solution 1, I had heard of a fix for this problem on another forum I belong to, NAIOA.com (North American Impala Owners Association, for the W-body Impala and all of it's good AND bad points), and after reading an old post there decided it was well within my abilities.
The panel below the glove compartment has to be removed, there are 2 quick release clips, and 1 christmas tree style push style retainer that needs a little encouragement to remove but isn't difficult.
Remove the clip holding the wire harness that runs along the left side of the blower motor (clip too) and the connector that juts out of this harness and connects to some unit on the firewall that you can hardly see, and remove the connector from the blower motor itsself, and disconnect the motor housing cooling tube too.
There are three screws holding this motor to the HVAC system air box, once these are removed (they are quite small standard size and requirea 1/4 inch ratchet and a 2 inch extension or a deepwell socket), you can finesse the motor and squirrel cage out of the air box.
This part is done. The next part is the time consuming part.
I have the luxury of having a variable power supply that allows the use of 30 amp's of power from 0 to 20 volts, and this helped me out A LOT!
I found that the housing end cap holds the bearing, and that bearing also supports the entire shaft of the motor and squirrel cage assembly along with all their combined weight, the bearing is the part that is making that awful noise, and it is NOT sealed from the factory resulting in you being able to see the end of that shaft and a small portion of the bearing.
I laid the motor and squirrel cage assembly with this opening facing up on my desk here next to the power supply, and rigged up a simple pair of wires and connectors to allow the fan to be run to be assured this was the problematic part and also to aid in lubrication.
I slowly applied enough WD-40 (any other penetrating lubricant will work too) to the shaft and bearing opening and allowed it to soak in for a while, and reapplied several dozen times in the next couple of hours, occasionally running the fan by applying 13.8 volts and quickly turning it down to a minimum, as this motor wants around 18 amps at 13.8 volts (resulting in many layers of paper blowing off from my desk), and quickly finding out that when the voltage is reduced the amperage is also drastically reduced too.
I found that this motor (out of wierd Amateur Radio operators' curiousity) will actually run off from a standard 9-volt battery too! Don't ask why I even tried because I don't really know either.
The motor needs the small area filled with lubricant (I used blue snowplow hydraulic fluid for the main lubricant but any light oil could also be used too, and after filling the little space, ran the motor, and repeated this several times over the next couple of hours until it wouldn't make any noise and was able to start the motor turning from a complete stop with only 1.5 volts and only about 2 amps, where I had to apply the full 13.8 when I began this venture.
I made sure to turn the motor assembly in EVERY direction and orientation I could while it was running to make sure the lubricant was getting everywhere it could.
When all this was done I had applied about 10 or so drops of WD-40, and probably 15-20 drops of hydraulic oil to the shaft and bearing. I have not seen any come back out and it's been back in service for a half a day now.
Re-installation of the motor and squirrel cage is just the reverse of removal, and you should be able to tell a 100% difference in the noise level, if not, I have no idea here but it worked for me.
Just in case you want to replace the motor and don't want to pay the prices in the range I listed above, and go to the local junkyard or auto recycler, here is a list of cross reference vehicles this motor fits according to all of the sources I checked.
Buick: 97-04 Century, & 97-03 Regal.
Chevrolet: 97-04 Corvette, 00-03 Monte Carlo, 00-03 Impala, & 97-03 Venture.
Oldsmobile: 1996 Cutlass Supreme, 97-00 Silhouette, & 98-02 Intrigue.
Pontiac: 97-03 Grand Priz, 97-98 Trans Sport, & 99-00 Montana.