Lost heat and AC

[Chuck Norris]

Okay, so my wife says to me "The heat and AC quit working in the Lincoln. What do you think is wrong?" Oh boy, I am not a mechanic of any kind, so bad thoughts race through my head. First I try the buttons in the car (it has the electronic climate control gizmo), and I can hear the doodads in the dash switching when I hit "vent", "floor", etc. I break out the Haynes manual and start trying to diagnose the problem, at this point thinking it's the blower motor. So I follow the instructions, and break out my test light (I had never used one before.) I ground the test light and start to remove the thermal limiter relay assembly from the evaporator case (quote from the book - I'd have called it the doodad and the whatamajigger) and - suprise - the blower kicks on! I had it turned on with the ignition set to the auxiliary setting to test it - didn't expect it to fire up though. Turns out, the problem is a bad wire, which could have cost me alot of money if I hadn't tackled the problem myself. So tommorrow, I will be rewiring it. Trust me, I know little about cars. However, I wanted to share my experience for two reasons (1) I did it myself, which is a big deal for me, and (2) if your blower quits working all the sudden, start with the fuse and work your way up. It's not automatically complicated just because you don't know anything about it. These Haynes books leave alot of stuff out and sometimes are just plain wrong (for your year model.) But you only live once, and the book is only $15, so go for it!

[Chuck Norris]

Argh! Can't just rewire it, gotta buy a new plug. Seems as though that is where the short is. I've got juice to the plug, but no ground. I guess I'll probably have to go to the junkyard for one of them, maybe tomorrow after work. Frustrating, but not the end of the world.

[p71towny]

If that plug is shitty it might have overheated from the resistor swich in the box. Unplug it and there should be two small bolts holding the other end of the terminal in the box. Unbolt it and take a look at it. Its a common problem on our year of town cars.

[Lincolnmania]

if you put 12v to the blower motor does it spin at full speed?
i've seen the connections go bad, and like chris said check the blower motor resistor and the plug

[Chuck Norris]

The blower has always acted strange but it worked. It would be on high, then low, then dedium, back to low, to high, so on. Then it went dead. But when I wiggles the wiring it came back on. So I think it's a dead ground, because I used the tester light and was getting plenty or current from the hot side. I got the new wiring harness but haven't installed it yet, because my patch job is holding okay (though it still behaves inconsistently.)