Drove the Dakota the first time it got hot as hell outside this summer since the A/C works in it and go figure the blower motor just up and stopped blowing completely while I was driving to work that morning and it hasn't worked since. Checked the fuses, they're fine and that's about the extent of my electrical diagnostic abilities so I yanked the doors off the Jeep and kept driving it instead. But, it's getting cold again and the Dakota is a lot friendly in colder weather so I'd like to get it working again. I saw in the FAQ about the blower motor resistor being prone to going out but it effecting different settings differently? Is that likely it or am I probably wasting $6 on a new one?

Also somewhat related, the heat in the truck has never been all that hot. Do the heater cores in these things respond pretty well to being backflushed?

 

well if you got a volt meter you can check for voltage at the blower itself and at the resistor under the hood pass side firewall(replaced mine last week cause I lost everything but high)

heater core on mine responded really well to a backflush with a hose I just cut the hoses over the engine and added needed adaptors ..

issue with heat sucking with mine still is the vehicle never hits operating temp... temp never rises and has been confirmed with a IR temp reader , even with fan removed it don't heat up much more ...

 

Good to know, I'll check it tomorrow. How prone are the resistors to going out anyway? I mean for the price should I just go ahead and replace it anyway?

And I think that may be my problem as well. Even in the summer when it's 100 degrees here my temp gauge just barely passes cold.

 

when i got my 91 the blower motor never worked and at the time it didnt occur to me to change the resister so i just traced wires and forgot about it(had other problems to fix first) then i thought about it one day i changed the resistor and everything worked again. yo can bet i facepalmed myself for that one since it is cheap to replace

 

resistors blow a lot.... simple concept, it restricts the amount of power to control fan speed so it heats up, kinda reason its located in area were airflow is great!

 

I've had a problem on 2 of these dakotas now where the pigtail that plugs into the resistor looses contact from dirt or loosening up. Either wire in a $20 replacement or clean them up and GENTLY pry the contacts slightly tighter and the blower works again.

 

I just went ahead and replaced it in all of 30 seconds this afternoon, got air again. The old one looked pretty damn old and 2 of the pins were rusty as hell. The connector has a lot of broken plastic on it and the female side of two of the pins are pretty rusty but it's working for now so I'm not gonna bother messing with replacing the wiring. But, in the future how hard is it to replace inside after the firewall? Or am I better off just cutting the old connector and the new and soldering the new one to the old wiring?

I've been chasing down air problems in my HVAC system on my Jeep for the last year and just never bothered with this since everything electrical on the truck has been a headache.

 

Unless the under-dash wiring is a bad cut & paste job, I'd leave it, just clean things up a bit and put some di-electric grease on connectors that look rusty/corroded & clean up any grounding points that you see. If you have broken connectors, tape them up and leave them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If you do need to replace anything under the dash, I'd go to a salvage yard and find a truck I could get the cabin harness from and use that - you'll have OEM connectors and OEM colors on the wires & I find that's a big help when I,m looking for problems since I generally try to use a factory service manual wiring diagram.