Almost Unobtainable

blower wheel
Originally uploaded by Teckelcar

A few months ago the air conditioning in the van developed a truly awful rattle.

At first it was intermittent, sometimes you would hear the whockity, whockity noise, sometimes you wouldn't. And when it happened it would just be for a brief staccato burst of sound. There was no real rhyme or reason to it.

Then it changed, it would happened at the higher blower speeds and would linger on for longer and longer periods. It got to the point that I would avoid the higher fan blower speeds, because I really didn't want to hear something akin to my car's a/c death rattle.

I developed a theory that something was getting bound up in the blower fan. I asked the kids to help pinpoint the sound and we settled on an area located up front, just behind the glove box. At this point the noise was pretty much continuous. Feeling bold, I took a peek and saw what could a blower motor.

And that's exactly what it was. After a bit of unplugging wires and unscrewing the motor from it's mounting I looked inside the and found nothing out of the ordinary.

Nuts.

Then a few weeks later the noise stopped. Unfortunately the lovely cool air from the a/c also stopped coming out of the front vents. This is unacceptable this time of year in the south.

So I once again pulled the blower motor out to try to puzzle out the mystery.

And there it was, a big old crack across the top of the blower wheel, radiating out from where it is pierced by the spindle of the motor. The rattle was the sound of it working loose and when the crack was big enough, it no longer worked. This was something I could do. All I had to do was to get a new blower wheel.

Easier said than done. I scoured the net for a replacement, but I could not find it. I could find the motor, but never the wheel. Which is pretty stupid considering the wheel is made of plastic. I even took it in to three different car parts stores and got the same story, no can do. I ended up going to the dealership and had then order it for me. Once it came in. it took all of 5 minutes for me to install it with just a bit of help from the nice guys in parts- they got the old wheel off, saved the retaining clip, and put the new wheel on- chivalry is not dead in the parts department.

Now sweet, sweet cool air fills the front of the van.