Mine just went out yesterday. 2009 with ~60,000 miles. No unusual noises prior to it going out. Was going to call the dealer last week to schedule my first ever repair (broken driver's side power door lock actuator), but now I'm glad I waited so I'll only have to go in once to get both things fixed. Still love my Fit.

 

Both the lock and blower are pricy repairs, if you don't have an extended warranty consider crying/asking for a "good will" repair...

 

I found this aftermarket blower fan on ebay for the 09 and up Fit. It's only $72 with free shipping for anyone who is interested.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BLOWER-MOTOR-ASSEMBLY-2009-2013-HONDA-FIT-79310-TF0-G01-700247-/281172459415?pt=Motors_Car_Truck_Parts_Accessories&hash=item41772f3f97&vxp=mtr

 

looks good. thanks, I'll keep it in mind if mine ever fails...

 

If you've got the time and effort, you can do the lock yourself. My passenger door lock went out (noisily) and I decided to replace it myself.

 

I purchased the extended warranty when i bought the car new and have never had to use it. I've done plenty of mods myself (springs, brakes, ss brake lines, extended wheel studs, etc) and all the maintenance, but I'm just going to have the pros do it and get what I've been paying for. Taking it in tomorrow morning.

also, after reading this guys effort, now I really dont feel like getting into it -- even though it's probably more annoying than difficult.

https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/fit-...-grinding.html

-Rob

 

Wow that's cheap enough I might even replace mine predictively. Would save me the $20 resisitor also in the process. An '09 with 77K miles and 80% lifetime A/C use is probably on borrowed time anyway.

_

 

Is anyone aware of any warning signs of imminent failure?
As in a noise, smell or whatever that it makes. I'll probably order one or those after market ones in a couple years and swap it in before the resistor gets taken with the motor..

 

but... wouldn't it still go back to... how can you be sure it isn't one of the units that would end up failing? $72 is cheap... unless it ends up needing replacement.

nope. when it goes... its gone. And since its the resistor that actually fails... any smell you get is from it burning up. So, like it said... by the time you notice, it's already too late.

when mine failed, I was on my road trip. it was working fine. did a pit stop for gas and food. when i got back on the road, it was busted. So, from "Tail of the Dragon" to NY and finally back home to Chicago, I had either no air or full blast.

edit: meant to say... you would've assumed that if there were signs of it "about" to fail... I would've noticed in the previous 8k rapid miles of driving my car during my road trip.

 

I can tell you that my 1st speed, then the 2nd speed started to make a dragging noise, then clicking noises. I originally thought it was the fan with some acorn debris in the fan vanes, because I have had that in the past when vermin brought them in and they slipped by the cabin fan into the fan vanes, on my Dodge Neon, NOT the Fit. Also, on the Dodge, the vermin ate through the vane material and caused an unbalanced rotation that made a repetitive clicking noise when it was on. On my Fit, I've had mice build nests on the cabin filter periodically, so, I guessed it might be them again.

As to the noise. Normally, since I bought the Fit, I couldn't hear 1st or 2nd speed on the fan when running. I could still feel the air coming out. Later, about 25K, both 1st and 2nd speed had a noise like dragging audible, but smooth rubbing. It did not alarm me at that time as I thought it was only the air noise and I was imagining it was a little louder than normal. Later the dragging noise was replaced with rythmic clicking on both 1st and 2nd speed, about 45K. Failure was within 6 months when the fan only operated on 4th speed, at about 50k. You can see that from the initial dragging to failure was about 25K. It occurred pretty early in my car compared to most.

 

Thanks, that's really helpful. I'll keep my ears open for any sounds like that. Guess the timeframe is unpredictable at best.

When you say noise, do you mean a slight hum when the car is off you can hear it at 1 or 2. Or do you mean clearly audible over road noise while driving?

 

after following this thread for a while, is there anything I can do to try and prevent this from happening? Any advice? 46K on my Fit, just had a dealer service and they didn't have any suggestions.

 

pretty much the only way to prevent it from happening is to leave it on full blast... or don't use it at all.

 

I don't think leaving it on high speed will prevent the blower from failing (just won't burn out the resistor pack).

While there's a high incidence of failure judging from anecdotal reports here, I think it's small relative to the number of Fits out there. Wouldn't lose sleep over it, but it's nice to know there are aftermarket options for the blower costing less than half the Honda part does.

 

You can tell the noises best without the engine running and only in 1st and 2nd speed. 3rd and 4th speeds are too loud with "wind" noise to actually hear anything unusual. The "clicking" are more obvious because they just are out of place and obviously not right. The "dragging" noise is more like a hum of something that is overloading, or loading up like the motor seems to be humming because it's working too hard.

Unless you're having some noise issues I wouldn't worry about it because even though there is a Honda Tech Bulletin out there, it must not be happening to most. I wish I knew the percentage.

I am guessing that the whole problem is a solid bushing problem with insufficient lubrication. I guess if one could open the fan to get to the lower bushing, in time, it might be able to be lubricated again. I know that when mine went, the fan was pretty stiff in turning compared to the new blower fan. It must be accumulating debris, or scoring somewhere. The bushing???

 

I agree, it probably wouldn't stop the blower itself from drawing too much power.

But, what I was just trying to say was... if its gonna happen, it's gonna happen, not much you can do to prevent it.

On the other hand, maybe if we knew what exactly was the issue. einstein77 mentions his guesses on lube (or lack of) and a few other ideas.

If it were anything like that, the only preventive measure is to take the blower apart and "correct" the issue. Not the kind of task for your everyday non-mechanic driver.

 

Honda isn't losing any sleep over it since they apparently haven't seen fit to come up with an improved replacement motor.

 

^It's probably still a small enough percentage that Honda isn't worrying too much about it.

Goobers, there was a thread here a while back where someone opened his blower motor and found that the bearing had seized up. The resistance to movement caused the excessive current draw and also took out the resistor.

I think he even had a video showing exactly where the point of failure was too.

Maybe if there were an "easy" way to lubricate that bearing, it would lower the chance of it seizing up.

 

Surprise surprise, I'm getting screwed on this repair. I took it to my local Honda dealer last week for the blower motor and resistor replacement, as well as a separate power door lock actuator. Turns out when I bought the car new back in 2009 I was talked into a third-party warranty that "lasts longer and covers just as much for less". Take it from me, don't fall for that bullshit. They would only cover the resistor replacement and took note that if it broke again they would take care of it. So I paid my $100 deductible and let them fix both issues. Well guess what, it broke again the very next day. Oh, and the power window is now all jacked up from the work they did on the power lock actuator. So, i took it back in this morning to get it sorted out. Just got a call that the window is fixed (the window channel was bent and they just bent it back), and the motor was replaced as well this time, but i'd have to pay another $100 deductible because this was a separate repair and the warranty company doesn't have record of ever saying they would cover it if it happened again. Dirty crooks. The dealership won't negotiate with the third party warranty I was sold from the dealer, so I'm headed there in a couple of minutes to get my paperwork out of the glovebox and have to take care of the negotiations myself while they hold on to the car until I pay. Oh, they also wont consider the goodwill fix either from Honda. What a pain in the ass. I'll keep you posted.

 

Sorry you're getting screwed "all around" from the dealer and the insurance, but how would you know in advance?