My heater fan stopped working back in March, so I replaced the blower relay. Just recently it stopped working again, so I checked the relay but it's fine. Can you guys point me in the direction of a good heater troubleshooting thread? BTW the car is an 86 EA82 wagon. Thanks guys.

Could be a fuse.  Check those.

Could be the relay again... That would be bad luck.

Hook up 12v to the blower motor directly... if it don't run, the motor is shot.

There is also a resistor pack that controls the low medium high fan output.   Those burn out.... but the high setting 'should' always work because it is not resisted.

2 fuses that say heater are good, the resistor was going out because it would only work on 3 & 4. I'll try to hot wire it this weekend to see if the motor is still good. How often do the fan switches go out on these cars?

I just replaced my resistor (finally) -it would only work on 3 & 4, which is weird- turned out to be a wad of insulation on it, like a nesting critter shorted it out.

The lowest speed resistor often fails on it's own. Anything that would block airflow over the resistors would accelerate their failure.

Sorry it's taken me so long to get to this. I just tried to hot wire the blower motor by running a power wire and a ground wire from the battery to the plug on the fan motor and got absolutely nothing. I tried with the key on and off and nothing happened. Am I doing this right or am I a complete moron lol?

I had the switch on 4, and the selector on defrost.

Sorry it's taken me so long to get to this. I just tried to hot wire the blower motor by running a power wire and a ground wire from the battery to the plug on the fan motor and got absolutely nothing. I tried with the key on and off and nothing happened. Am I doing this right or am I a complete moron lol?

 

If you ran power and ground directly to the blower...and it didn't turn.........It's bad.

 

Sometimes you can pull the end cap off the blower motor itself, and clean out carbon debris and other crud in the brush area.......this will sometimes bring a dead fan back to life.

 

Otherwise replacement is the option.

Ok awesome thank you. I had to drive 88 miles yesterday morning at 4:30, it was 17 degrees out when I left. By the time I got to the shop I couldn't feel my feet and I was wearing all my snow boarding gear minus the boots lol.

Got it fixed, blower motor was toast.

Ok, I'm sorry if this has been answered before but I don't really know what to search for so I'm just gonna post it here. My heater blows lukewarm air out the middle vents (possible heater core), but cold air out the sides. What would cause this? It does this on all settings, and my fresh air vents are closed.

Are you sure the vent cable is hooked up correct and actually closing the door on the passenger side?

 

Also....if you pull and cap the Vac line to the frech air inlet behind the airbox you will get Recirc heat....instead of trying to warm up cold outside air.  (canada models have button/solenoid to do this)

Ok I'll check this weekend, tonight I have to mess with the fan. It's already cutting out again. All the different heat settings work like vent, defrost, bi level ect... it's just blowing cold air from the sides and warmer air out the middle.

I need to source another blower motor, this one just took a dump on me.

I need to source another blower motor, this one just took a dump on me.

On the stock motors, there's a vent tube, on the auto parts store motors there isn't one. Is this a problem? I'll post a pic in a minute.

 

That vent tube is used to air cool older motors.

That's what I thought. The New motor actually has a hole for the tube, you just couldn't see it in the pic. Now I have it hooked up, and I'm not getting any power to it. Gotta check that relay again.

It was the relay again. Good thing I had another one in the glove box. I go oped it up with dielectric grease this time so hopefully it'll last a while.