98 taurus blower

[jeff-in-pa]

I have a 98 taurus. The blower fan was working sporadically, now not at all. Turning the 2 knobs back and forth seemed to make it work before. The different speeds were working and I checked the blower (hot wired), it works. With a meter I was not getting power at fan. Please help!

[shorod]

Welcome to the forum! For future reference, you don't need to send me a private message and post the same question to the forum. I check both at the same time.

Pasted from my private message to you:
Since you mention turning the knobs would sometimes get it to work, I trust you have the manual HVAC controls rather than the electronic controls. Also, I'm assuming that high speed doesn't work either. If High speed doesn't work, that rules out the blower motor resistor, at least as the sole culprit.

The fan speed switch on your '98 is a grounding switch. The blower motor resistor is betweeen the blower motor resistor assembly and ground. Power is provided by a relay in the engine compartment fuse panel. The relay coil gets power via 5-amp fuse 13 in the instrument panel fuse panel, which should be hot with the key in Run. The contacts of the relay get power from 40-amp fuse 11 in the engine compartment fuse panel which is hot all the time. You should check these fuses as well as the relay. If the fuses are fine and the correct power is available at the relay terminals, and the relay checks out okay, then you need to check the coil ground circuit which is driven by vent selector knob, grounds the relay coil when the selector knob is not in the Off position.

-Rod

[tripletdaddy]

Well at first I thought, oh come on, your just showing off, Rod, it could just be a dirty fan speed switch. But, not if there is no power found at the motor. Which means, jip, you need to be looking upstream of the motor for your problem. So, fuses, relay and selector switch need to be checked for continuity and getting power to the positive side of everything, working your way down to the motor. If the blower motor relay is a universal size, try swapping it out with another on your car and see if that gets it to work. As explained so elegantly by Rod, the fan motor speed switch and blower motor resistor assembly provide the ground to this circuit for the different fan speeds. Because of that, if you want, like you did before with a hot jumper to the motor, you can test the fan speed selector to see if it works at all speeds, eliminating it and the resistors as suspects.

[jeff-in-pa]

Just wanted to say thanks. It was the relay in the power panel under the hood. Thanks again!

[shorod]

Excellent, glad to hear you got your issue fixed and thank you for the follow-up post! This will give the next person to experience a similiar issue a bit of a head-start.

-Rod

[BKerr38]

My girlfriend was having the same problem. Thanks guys, it was a bad connection on the output of the relay under the hood. Fixed for $0 in 20 minutes. THANK YOU!!!