blower motor issue
 

I have a 96 xj, 4.0. Two days ago we got our first snow and my blower motor quit working. It doesn't matter cold/hot or what speed the blower is on... Just nothing comes out. It worked three days ago, and the temperature took a twenty degree dive. If I hold my hand to my vent I can feel warm air barely coming out (on all settings), but not blowing at all. I checked the fuse under the dash, and its fine. Any advice? All help is appreciated!

You did right checking the fuse first. I'd still replace the fuse as I've seen where some non visible film can develop on the contacts and render it bad. Odds are that it isn't the resistor block either (this controls fan speed and is located plugged into the vents right behind the glove box). When that goes out, you still have high. Two big possibilities still exist.

1. The plug that goes into the blower motor is bad. I've had this happen myself.
2. The blower motor is fubar.

You'll have to remove the blower motor at this point. To do this isn't as bad as it looks. It is located in the firewall under the hood on the passenger side. You'll need to remove the canister right in front of it. Loosen the bracket and slide the canister out. Then the bottle for the a/c will still be in the way. Loosen the bracket for this and rotate it to the side and you'll have just enough room to remove the blower. There are several hex head screws holding the motor in place. remove them and slide the blower out and remove the plug.

I'd test the blower before running to the parts store. If you don't have any jumper wires, just use a couple lengths of scrap wire and put power to the motor from your battery or a power source like a jump pack. You'll need to put both polarities to the contacts. If it works, I'd suspect the plug on the harness. If it is the plug, what I did was to cut off the plug close to the wire coming out of it. They don't give you much slack to go much farther and still have it reach the motor in place. Get some crimp on connectors and use them as replacements.

Outside of this, there's not much more that it could be unless an issue has developed in your control unit on the dash. These rarely go bad, however.

Thanks for the info! I have tomorrow off from my afternoon job, so I'll check that out then. I commute to my first job so I bought a cigarette outlet heater to get by until then.