2009 Fit blower motor doesn't work AT ALL....then it does
 

Hi, all.

My 2009 Fit stopped blowing air yesterday. Acting on something I read on another page, I moved the "circ/recirc" slider a couple of times and that seems to have fixed it.

A year or so ago, I had the "blows air only on high" thing and fixed it by replacing the resistor and blower motor. This time it was completely dead. Until I moved the circ/recirc slider.

Any ideas? My inclination is to start shopping around for another resistor and blower motor, running the fan no higher than 2. I don't want to get into a chasing down of a short, unless that's absolutely necessary.

Thanks!

Joe

No replies on this one? On my 2011 sport the fan isn’t working at all right now. That’s after a few months of driving around with it only working on high. Replacing the resistor didn’t work, so I was hoping the blower motor would fix it.

Tight on time. Heres the symptom troubleshooting pages. you pick a rabbit hole and I'll provide the documents.

Awesome. Thanks for that. As of now I fall into that first line, so if you have page 21-8 available that would be awesome. Either way there’s a list of things there to check, so I appreciate it.

the blower motor was a little noisy last time it functioned, so I was hoping I just burned out the motor and could fix it by replacing that and the resistor. Seems like there might be an issue beyond that, but possibly still caused by the extra friction in the worn out blower motor.

I'm not familiar with that failure myself, though have in one instance dealt with blower problems on another vehicle. It was a family van, and from the days of the McDonalds 42oz soda. Dark times for the automotive enthusiast... One of the many times an incident like that happened, soda hit the ceiling and a wily droplet found its way. It wasn't an immediate failure either. Months passed before things went pear shaped. The fan stopped working at certain speeds. Eh, but that's probably irrelevant here. Suppose I miss those hilarious sodas now. Anyways, down to business. I ripped everything that I thought could be relevant to you. I'd upload everything for yuh, but the site don't allow and I'm far from tech savvy.
Its all coming from Honda's Bishko shop service manual. If ever something like that should interest you, ebay may still have a few around 30 buckos, but perhaps I could burn the CD. I'll have to give that a try.

The provided material should be super useful, but if it don't do the job, just shout out a system or component you'd like to focus on.

Do they not sell big sodas any more? Obviously I am more of a beer man myself otherwise I'd know.

My brother had a root beer explode upon opening in his car. Didn't ever clean it. Moved to GA two years later. I was grateful for the free lodging so I spent a trip down there cleaning his headliner and everywhere else in 95f heat (surprise gift, no he didn't ask me to). It was gross.

Moral = stick to water

I seem to do similar car cleaning for all my family members lol.

Typically running the blower fan on anything but high requires use of the blower fan resistor; high bypasses the resistor. So if you can only run high, typically blower resistor is at fault.

However, blower resistors don't typically fail on their own so you need to find the failure that is causing excess current draw/heat. Typically that might be: blocked cabin air filter, blocked fresh air intake, garbage in the blower fan, busted blower fan (worn bearings, water ingress, wear and tear), short in wiring, etc.

There are some posts here noting issues with the Honda Fit blower resistors so search on that.

If you fan is making noise then I would suspect either there is something inside and/or it is failing. Unusual for such a new blower fan to fail but take it out and inspect. Maybe dirt or water issue?.

Fitting :thumbups:
I didn't know any of that.

[QUOTE=Pyts;1432972]Fitting :thumbups:
I am having a similar issue. Moving the "circ/recirc" slider a couple of times also caused my blower to start. It then starts to smell "burny", so I shut it off. I pulled the blower motor out but left the power cable connected. If I spin the fan manually, then the motor starts working again. So it seems to be a problem with the motor getting the fan started. The fan appears clean and spins ok, but maybe not completely freely. I'd have to see how a brand new fan spins I guess. Maybe a bearing issue? I'm leaning towards replacing the whole blower motor. Any advice? Thanks!

I'm wondering if you have some sort of obstruction in the blower's intake duct that is causing the motor to strain. Replacement is pretty easy! I'd even consider popping yours out to see what's going on.
If memory serves, the motor utilizes a sintered bearing, which is oil "impregnated" metal?... or just some amalgam. I don't think it possible for the bearing to cook because of that. Rather, I think it develops excess slack/gap. I can't recall if the motor has brushes, but I don't recall serviceability. TYC makes a fine replacement blower. Four Seasons makes good quality stuff, too. To the tune of $60-70, it could be all shiny and new.
Once popped out you could try jumping it to the car's battery to observe operation if you're so inclined

Happened to me on my old Cavalier. Blower would not work, then suddenly started working again until I turned the car off. Then it would do that again at the next start. Mechanic showed me that in that state, I would just have to hit the blower fan with something, and it would start. That was the DC motor failing. Had to replace the blower to solve the problem.

All that happened in the winter, as it was super cold outside. I was not fun to drive without hot air, with the windows open to prevent condensation from forming on the windshield!

my blower motor wasn't working at all i went to the junk yard and got another blower motor and that fixed the issue..

I replaced the resistor on my 2009 Fit. That did it four a couple of days. Then if went out...and I replaced the blower motor AND the resistor.

Good luck!

Just ran into this issue as well - same exact symptoms. Blower would not spin, but if I turned it off, spun it slightly by hand, then turned it on, it would work okay. Toggling fresh air / cabin air would also tend to wake it up and get it spinning. Eventually it stopped spinning altogether. I removed the blower, verified the voltage at the connector on all blower settings, and then installed a new one. That fixed it.

Also FWIW the Honda part seems to be way more expensive than the aftermarket one at about $350-400 vs. $100. I would normally go for Honda parts but in this case I couldn't justify the extra cost.

Here's a link to a thread showing disassembly of the Fit's blower fan. Sintered bearings, brushed motor. It just develops slop as it wears ~ until there's too much for the motor to turn the blower fan. Start-up requires the most "oomph", to coin a technical term. The blower fan for our home furnace runs on 7.2 amps, but when it kicks on it needs (up to) 3x that, hence the 20 amp breaker. Yeah, I know that math's bad, but give it a googling.

We just finished upgrading our electrical service at our home and it's in the middle of winter. I rented a 3500 watt gas generator (that's just shy of 30 amps at 120 volts) and pulled wiring from our breaker box to hook up the furnace via extension cord. Didn't check the amp draw, but that thing throttled notably when the blower kicked on to keep us warm on a 29° night. Fun times. Our neighbors already hated me.

Blower motor failure, cause of death
 

Replaced my blower motor last year, 2009 Fit base model. It had developed a scraping/rubbing noise that was hard to pinpoint. Squirrel cage wheel wasn't hitting anything, but spinning by hand you could feel a rub every revolution. Ordered a replacement motor from Rockauto, came with a new squirrel wheel. 5 minute job, pull 3 screws, unplug the connector, swap in the new one and done. Smooth as silk. Upon teardown of the old unit, lots of copper filings revealed the armature, which is fairly heavy, by gravity and road bumps had worn down the motor bushing and was allowing it to contact the motor windings, dragging until it could no longer spin freely. That's how mine died. Easy to replace.

That is one failure mode, but generally begins with the motor starting slugishly - picking speed very slowly as the bearings heat up and get a bit more fluid. As the wear gets worse, the motor gets more and more sluggish until it can't move at all, overheats and burns out a winding.

The failure people are describing here - stopped motor can be started by tapping on it or jostling it - is typical of a commutator contact failure, coil failure, or worn brushes.

Brushed DC motor operation: In the thread you linked, the 3rd pic shows a side-view of the motor's "armature", aka "rotor", aka "the spinny part". On the left side there is a segmented copper cylinder - that's the commutator. Each segment is an electrical contact, connected to a pair of coils (the wires visible) which apply an electromagnetic field to the poles (layered steel segments in the center of the armature). The brushes (positive and negative, shown a couple pics down) touch the commutator to pass electrical current from the stationary body of the motor to the spinning armature. The brushes contact different commutator segments as the armature rotates, changing which armature poles have N and S magnetic fields. The body of the motor has permanent magnets in it (visible on the walls of the housing in the brushes pic) that create stationary N and S magnetic poles. The armature poles try to rotate to align with the stationary poles, but the commutator switches the armature poles back a step before the poles reach alignment - the armature is constantly chasing the stationary poles, rotating the motor shaft.

If one of the commutator contacts fails, or one of the brushes is too worn down to touch the commutator, current can't flow to the armature, no electromagnetic field gets generated, the motor doesn't spin.
Tapping on the side of the motor (especially the end where the brushes are) can bump a worn brush enough to make contact with the commutator, which starts the motor spinning. The drag of the spinning commutator then wedges the brush in a position where the motor can keep running. Most starter motors use hefty brushed DC motors, so tapping on the motor housing can bring one back to life to get home or to a shop. Alternators also have brushes that suffer this kind of failure, but the armature has two solid ring terminals on it instead of a commutator.
A bad commutator contact generally requires manually rotating the motor past the bad contact to get it started. Once the motor is rotating, it can coast past the bad contact each time it comes around to face one of the brushes. The "skipped" pole may reduce motor torque and power, meaning a reduced top speed in addition to the starting issues.

Changed my blower motor last year. Air flow seemed weak and more importantly the fan switch was getting warm to the touch.