2002 Silverado blower

Unless things have radically changed the blower motor is under the hood, right side of engine bay on airbox on firewall next to fender. Should have two wires, a ground wire going from the "motor housing" to the firewall, and a purple wire plugged in. Easy check is multimeter on purple wire and see if voltage changes as fan switch moved. If you got power its the motor, another quick check is to rap on the motor lightly once or twice and see if it starts. Also make sure ground wire has good connection.

Whitelightning

Except for one little teensy tiny detail, it quit working on high, and on high the circuit doesn't go through the resistor.

Whitelightning

Okay, for the heck of it and because I'd run a few tests, I replaced the blower motor. No joy. Still nuttin'. Dead as a hammer.

I'm pretty sure that my resistor needs replacing (because of the way the blower would only work on "5" for a while), so I plan on trying to [find] do it tomorrow.

However, I'm stumped. The resistor being bad shouldn't result in the blower not working at HIGH speed, should it?

If not, does it look like I need to replace the switch? Or do I need to do some kind of mystical, ninja-type, multimeter/wiring testing?

Any [further] help or suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks gobs,

Charlie

Did you try a jumper from the positive bat terminal to the blower?

Regards, JR

I think I know what you're asking, but...I'm really not sure I did it right. When I had the old motor out, I ran a piece of wire from the pos terminal on the battery to one of the contacts on the blower and the ground from the other term to the other contact...and nothing happened, then I switched contacts. Nothing happened. Maybe I didn't have a good enough connection, maybe I didn't use the right gauge of wire...I don't know.

Can you give me some guidance on the best way to do this? Or anything else I ought to do/check next?

Since I've never done much tracing of electrical faults, you might have to use little words and talk REAL slow, though. : P

All...Okay, I finally rigged a decent gauge wire to the battery and got the motors (old and new) to spin. Just wasn't getting enough current to it before, I guess.

So, it's not the motor. (BTW, anybody know anybody wants a brand new blower motor? :) ) With the motor out, I ran the multimeter on the incoming power connector (purple and black wires going into it) with the key on, moved the blower switch from position 1 to 2 to 3, etc. and didn't get much of any reading. Again, I could have been doing something wrong with the probes, but I was trying to make good contact with the contacts in the connector. All the HVAC fuses seem to be good.

assume that I'm going to need a new resistor anyway, but that doesn't seem to be the solution for the blower not to be working all the way up on "5".

What now? Any suggestions on what to do/test next?

All...

Well, I got it worked out. After the advice I got here, I verified that it wasn't the blower motor and finally just replaced the resistor (@ $17, instead of the $100+ motor). Everything works like a champ now. Because I didn't know where any of this was even located when I started, I bought a Haynes manual just to FIND the stuff. But the manual didn't help the way this board did.

I learned a lot on this: How to read my multimeter (really, just learning to trust that I'm reading it right), how my blower/resistor stuff is hooked up and works together and how to hook up a motor like that, while it's pulled out of the vehicle, and find out whether it's okay or not.

This was my first thread/question here and I really appreciate everyone's help. VERY inexpensive resolution.

Y'all aren't getting paid enough...

That's right he could have just thrown parts at it till he happened upon the correct one, or until he replaced all the parts only to find out a break in a wire was causing the problem, or the motor lost ground.. Instead, he has a manual for his vehicle, and learned how to use and trust his multimeter to check circuits.

You were correct in one area, I was wrong about the high feed going through the resister. GM changed something that should have been left alone. The beauty of the old way was if you lost the resistor block you still had high, which meant you still had defrosters that worked when its 10 below.

Whitelightning

The OP didn't say how he came to decide to try the blower first (you know my thoughts on that), but I merely suggested that sometimes swapping a $17 part, knowing it is a major piece of the puzzle, is worth days of frustration. MZ

Good going guys, I too had the same problem, but recently traded up to a 2006 Duramax. Still have a new $100+ blower motor never installed it. Anyone need one? Can't return it, eletrical device they say.

Good going guys, I too had the same problem, but recently traded up to a 2006 Duramax. Still have a new $100+ blower motor never installed it. Anyone need one? Can't return it, eletrical device they say.