A few months ago, the heater blower motor in my 2000 Honda Civic started making a buzzing noise. It sound like maybe there was a leaf or something in there touch the fan blades. As time went one, it seemed to get worse.
I decided to pull the fan out and see if there was something in there. I pulled out my Haynes and Chilton guides. The motor was pretty easy to remove. It was located under the dash, behind the glove compartment. It was mostly just awkward laying on my back to get to it. There were just three screws holding it in. I just removed the three screws, and it dropped right out.
The fan and motor were covered by a black soot like powder. I didn’t see anything like a leaf. I removed the fan blade from the motor, and washed it off. I blew off the heater blower motor with blasts of compressed air from my compressor. I put the fan back on the motor, and reinstalled it. It made an awful noise. It sounded like the fan was rubbing against something. I pulled it out again, repositioned the fan a little bit, and reinstalled it again. It was quieter, but pretty much how it had been before I messed with it. I searched online, and found this was common for heater blower motors in Hondas.
I decided to try something else. I bought some oil especially for electric motors. It was made by 3-In-One, and I found it at Home Depot. I pulled the heater blower motor out again. First I sprayed in WD-40 to clean the old gunk out. Then I lubed it as well as I could with the electric motor oil. I reinstalled the motor. It was subtly quieter than before.
I debated about buying a used motor at a auto salvage yard. But I thought I might be buying a motor that would encounter the same problem. I looked for OEM motors, and found they were not cheap.
I stopped down at the local auto parts store and bought an aftermarket replacement heater blower motor. It was significantly cheaper than the OEM models I found online. It didn’t come with the fan. I removed the heater blower motor from the car again. I swapped the fan from the old motor to the new one. Since the fan just clamps on a shaft, I positioned it as close as I could to where it was on the original motor. There was a small plastic plug piece that the motor wires fit into. I followed the included instructions to fir the wires into the connector so that the fan would rotated in the proper direction. I installed the new motor. Installation went a little easier as I had stopped at Sears and bought a screwdriver type handle with a flex shaft to hold small sockets. This allowed me to reach the small screws much more easily.
The new motor was quieter and had way more power than the old motor. It was well worth the effort of replacing it. And I will have the car for quite a while, so hopefully it will last the life of the car.
