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Old 09-30-2009, 12:57 AM
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Strife Strife is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: KY USA
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What's wrong with it. Two things come to mind:

1. Bearings (probably need grease)
2. Brushes worn out
3. (Probably fabulously rare) nichrome "resistance cage" attached to blower (in the plug) has opens

In case 1, it is VERY difficult to get actual grease (NOT WD-40, light oil, etc, which actually washes away what little real grease is left and will make things "Better" only temporarily) on the bearings, but it IS doable with wire and some ingenuity.

In case 2, the brushes are held in with clips, and need to be resoldered in with a fairly heavy-duty higher-wattage soldering iron. You can get away with (for a while) stretching the springs a bit (not recommended) if a good part of the brushes are still there. Mercedes Source sells the brushes; I think it would be possible to reshape brushes you can get at a good hardware store, but for $25 or so, this might not be worth the trouble.

Case 1 costs almost nothing and an hour if you have the blower out already; case 2 costs $5-$40 and a few hours, depending on what you have and what you get.
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