Blower motor resistor???

Nickspera

Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2007
Location
florida
TDI
03 jetta
Gentlemen,
I have a 02 jetta TDI. i recnelty went to use my A/c and noticed that setting 1, 2, and 3 blow no air and setting 4 blows fine. whats weird is the a/c light only stays on from setting one through 3 and goes off on 4. so basically i am stuck with warm air. is this a blower motor resistor problem?? because the blower seems to work fine..

any help would be appreciated...
 

david_594

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Feb 28, 2004
Location
Cheshire, CT
TDI
2000 Jetta GLS Silver
Nickspera said:
Gentlemen,


any help would be appreciated...
The AC issue sounds like a bit of an oddball, but the fan only working on 4 is pretty typical for a failed resistor. Personally I would start by replacing the resistor and see if that resolves everything. At the very least it should get the fan working right, and then you can troubleshoot the AC.
 

mrGutWrench

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 29, 2002
Location
Carrboro, NC
TDI
'03 Jetta Wagon, 5-speed, 563K Miles (July '23)
david_594 said:
The AC issue sounds like a bit of an oddball, but the fan only working on 4 is pretty typical for a failed resistor. Personally I would start by replacing the resistor and see if that resolves everything. At the very least it should get the fan working right, and then you can troubleshoot the AC.
__. Hey, David, congrats on Vet school - good luck with that. The symptoms he's described are typical of the failed resister pack. On 1-3 you get cold air (although the fan doesn't run and it's hard to tell) and the light is on, then on 4 the light goes off, the cold air turns warm, and the fan runs (DAMHIK). A new resister pack usually fixes it -- unfortunately, there is often a problem (like a fan that's pulling too much juice) that blew the resister pack in the first place and the other problem needs to be traced down and fixed (DAMHIK).
 

Herk

New member
Joined
Jul 17, 2007
Location
Boise, ID
TDI
2003 Jetta Wagon
Fixed this problem for $2

Had similar issue, exact same symptom. Blower resistor failure, actually thermal fuse, resistor was fine. A few salient points I'd like to pass on:

1st: Although the FSM directs you to remove the glove box, although not difficult, this is unnecessary. The blower resistor is easily accessed by peeling a bit of insulation away above the passenger footwell. Once I had the glove box out, this became apparent (you would have to remove the glove box to replace the blower motor).

2nd: The resistor can be repaired. There is an integral "thermal fuse" which was the failure point in my case. There is a DIY on the Vortex that pretty much sums up the repair http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?2665283

On my 03, it worked YMMV
 

Shouse

Veteran Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2009
Location
Fort Worth, TX
TDI
2000 Jetta TDI GL - 185k
Had similar issue, exact same symptom. Blower resistor failure, actually thermal fuse, resistor was fine. A few salient points I'd like to pass on:

1st: Although the FSM directs you to remove the glove box, although not difficult, this is unnecessary. The blower resistor is easily accessed by peeling a bit of insulation away above the passenger footwell. Once I had the glove box out, this became apparent (you would have to remove the glove box to replace the blower motor).

2nd: The resistor can be repaired. There is an integral "thermal fuse" which was the failure point in my case. There is a DIY on the Vortex that pretty much sums up the repair http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?2665283

On my 03, it worked YMMV
Thanks for the Info. You don't have to pull the glovebox to replace the resistor but you do have to pull the glovebox (think I've seen a thread w/ a way around this but not sure if I recommend it) to access the blower. Seems that sometimes the resistor blowing is a cause of a blower malfunctioning so they would both have to be replaced in that circumstance.
 

jettawreck

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Aug 2, 2004
Location
Northern Minnesota-55744
TDI
2001 Jetta and 2003 Jetta
Thanks for the Info. You don't have to pull the glovebox to replace the resistor but you do have to pull the glovebox (think I've seen a thread w/ a way around this but not sure if I recommend it) to access the blower. Seems that sometimes the resistor blowing is a cause of a blower malfunctioning so they would both have to be replaced in that circumstance.
As mentioned, it usually just the thermal fuse on the resistor pack that goes. Its there to protect the resistor.
I've repaired two resistor packs by just replacing the fuse soldered across the terminals with a new one. You can get a new thermal fuse from Radio Shack for $1.75. Check the cabin air filter for clogging to make sure you are getting good air flow. The resistor pack gets hot. There is a thread written up with all the details. I think DanG144 posted the steps to fix. He helped steer me into diagnosing my failed fuse. The AC button will light in fan selector positions 1,2,3 but the fan will not run. Position 4, the fan runs but no AC button light.
Remove the glove box if you replace the blower fan motor, but you don't need to if you're just doing the resistor pack.
 
Last edited:

bjrpkr

Active member
Joined
Apr 10, 2008
Location
Missouri
TDI
2004 Jetta
On 2004 Jetta, not necessary to remove glove box to get access to resistor pack.
 

Joe_Meehan

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Sep 3, 2005
Location
Ohio USA
TDI
NB TDI, 2002.5, Silver
It is common. Normally the slow speed resistor goes, and then one at a time the others will go until the owner replaces them or you run out of resistors to replace.
 

1854sailor

Resident Curmudgeon
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Location
Westerly, RI
TDI
2015 Golf SE SportWagen, 2015 Golf SE Hatch Back.
Back when the Golf was new, the stealer replaced the resistor pack three times. On the way home from work one day, there was smoke coming out of the vents, so I shut the ac down. I pulled the glove box out and started looking around to see if I could find something charred under there. At first, nothing, so I turned the AC back on and saw the source of the smoke. The harness had chafed through on one of the dash supports. Either the wiring harness was poorly routed at the factory, or the stealer had toofed it replacing the resistors. I think that it was the former, because I replaced the charred wires, taped it all back up, moved the harness out of harm's way and haven't had another problem with it in 11 years.
 

mjnsn1999

New member
Joined
Oct 2, 2014
Location
Georgia
TDI
2003 VW Golf TDI/2016 VW Touareg TDI Sport
Thanks Herk

I was also having similar problems with the fan blower motor. After speaking with the dealer, I decided to do some research. Your thread helped me solve my lack of A/C and fan with the simple replacement of the thermal fuse and the cab filter (seriously required changing). The only difficulty I had was soldering the thermal fuse onto the resistor contacts. The soldering was extremely sloppy (I rarely solder). After multiple attempts the fuse was soldered. It is working like a champ but, my only concern is the soldering. How likely is solder failure?

Again thanks for the helping hand.

:D
 
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