Several weeks back, my wife took the Saab out to see a friend of hers, on on her return she said 'You do know the fans don't work don't you?'. I didn't. The motor had been a bit squeaky for a long while, but it worked when I last used the car. However a quick run out to the car confirmed she was indeed correct and the fan didn't work on any speed setting.

Might just be a fuse I thought. It wasn't just a fuse. The fuse for the fan blower was absolutely fine. Bumhats.

So, today the sun shone and I thought I'd get stuck in. Ebay revealed multiple types of blower motor depending on all sort of options so I thought the best thing to do was to strip the dash down, extract the current one and get the part number so I could order a secondhand replacement.

Weaponry deployed. This was £6 at a car boot sale about 5 years ago and its probably the best £6 I have ever spent.

I set to, removing the glovebox. Its held in with 5 torx screws, 2 top, 2 bottom and one through the rear 'wall'. Glovebox removal

With the glovebox out, I could see my nemesis

Next up was removing the ducting, undertray thing and the side on the centre console

This enabled me to get at all 6 screws which hold the blower motor to the intake duct, with these removed and the tabs unclipped, I eased the blower motor and bottom half of the house it lives in out the bottom

Incidentally, it took me about 40 minutes to get to this point, and have never done it before. All the guides I read suggested that it would take at least 3 hours to get this far. I assumed I'd done something wrong.

This is how it looked with all the gubbinz removed

I got the part number, which for my car was Valeo 007018T which is the one with the manual air con, not automagic climate control. I went to ebay to see what a replacement one would cost. about £80 was the going rate. Hmmm.

I took the assembly to my shed to have a good look at it. it was stiff to rotate and very squeaky. At some point early in my ownership the passenger side footwell got very wet after driving in a very heavy rainstorm, closer inspection revealed that the deflector in the engine bay which houses the pollen filter had come away from the bulkhead, meaning the water was running down the screen and being sucked straight into the blower intake. I re-attached it and silicone sealed around the edge to stop this from re-occurring but I think this is when the damage was originally done.

The bearings were very squeaky so I removed the motor from the housing by loosening the three little torx screws in the bottom and sliding it out.

I got my grease gun and gave the bottom bearing - which was by far the most stiff and squeaky - a dose of multi-purpose grease and spun it round and moved the shaft in and out (fnarr etc) to make sure the grease was well distributed. I tend did the same with the other end which is a bit more fiddly as the fan bit gets in the way. I ended up shovelling a couple of blobs of grease in using a bit of bent wire.

Greased bearing

Then I slid the motor back into the housing and screwed it into place. The fan now turned a lot more easily by hand and there was no squeaking any more. I took the assembly back to the car and plugged it all in lying in the footwell. To my great delight the motor instantly whirred into life on setting 1, so I tried it on all 5 settings - and apart from trying to make a determined break for freedom on speed 5 as it wasn't secured - it all seemed good. I turned it all back off and set about re-assembling

Assembly back in place and screwed in, resistor hedgehog thing re-fitted and wires plugged in

Ducting, undertray cleaned and re-attached, centre console sideplate re-fitted

Finally, re-fitted the glovebox, and connected the glovebox light cabling so it worked. No parts left over and looking just like it did before I started, except the blower works again on all speeds and is silent.

So, a free fix, and only took me about 2 hours end-to-end, including ebaying the replacement and generally fiddling about. I've not done one of these before but in all honesty it wasn't that bad a job.

Not sure how long it will last before it gives up again as its clearly suffered some damage from water - there were noticeable marks on the inside of the housing and the undertray thing which i have cleaned so I can see if it is still happening if I have to dis-assemble again, but I think this is from when it flooded last autumn and has been fine since.

I took the cover off the pollen filter to make sure it was clear and it was fine, no leaves and muck that afflicts these cars and causes flooding - it seemed that it was just that the water wasn't being deflected properly before, but is now. This did highlight that the pollen filter was a biohazard and needs sorting out when I service it next weekend.