Looking for a good used blower motor with case for an 81 380sl, or new replacement motor, ideally w/blades, for same.

I don't have a replacement, but what happened to yours?

If it's not physically broken, I might want to buy your non-working one as a core to rebuild. Let me know.

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86 560SL
With homebrew first gear start!
85 380SL
Daily Driver Project

http://juliepalooza.8m.com/sl/mercedes.htm

It started squealing just before I began doing a valve job. So I squirted some Liquid Wrench in there, and the squealing stopped. However, I assume the squealing's going to come back sooner or later -- which is why I want to rebuild it myself or find a reasonably priced replacement before I put the car back on the road.

Do you happen to know if the fan bearings can be replaced and, if so, how how difficult that is? Or does the squealing come from the motor? Someone said a while ago that ******** had motors for it, but I can't find them on their website. And I've also seen motors with blades somewhere, but I can't find them anywhere either.

Thanks for any help you or anyone else here can give me on this.

Will the blower from a 116-380 work or is the motor interchangeable... Jim

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James A. Harris

My 380's motor started to squeal at low temperatures. I had replaced the blower cover gasket before, so water wasn't coming in from there. I got the blower motor out with difficulty; the nuts are probably rusty on yours too (use PB blaster, because you can break the studs and make BIG problems for yourself).

The seal between the blower case and gasket to the body was really stuck, and I VERY CAREFULLY separated them with a blade. Many people have broken blower motor cases removing the blower. I discovered that the gasket below wasn't doing as good of a job as it should be doing, and some surface rust is developing in this area. I noted this for a spring project and ordered the (~30$) gasket from MB.

Once off, I separated the top and bottom of the housing. This is 20+ year old plastic and it is brittle. As careful as I was, I broke one of the plastic retaining areas for a clip. There are a lot of clips, so missing one probably is not that bad.

I realized that without a jig of some kind, it wold be difficult or impossible to get the blower squirrel cages off without breaking something, and even then, theses look like they are made of 20+ year old Nylon. I did, however, manage to deliver a LOT of synthetic bearing grease (the best I can find) to the bearings - I did this with a long thin screwdriver. WD-40 is more of a solvent and it probably wouldn't be a long-term help here.

After reassembly, the squeal is gone, at temps even lower than when it was squealing before. So, we will see.

I may also order brushes from ************** in the spring. It's cheaper than a new one, and a used one isn't probably going to be much better than what I have.

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86 560SL
With homebrew first gear start!
85 380SL
Daily Driver Project

http://juliepalooza.8m.com/sl/mercedes.htm

Thanks very much for the detailed info, Strife . Based on it, i guess i have to weigh the pros and-cons of taking mine out and greasing the bearings vs buying a used one that will develop the same problems sooner or later. In any case, the cost of a new one is too high to consider at this point. So I guess i'll try to rehab mine first. After all, I have nothing to lose if that doesn't work.