AC Blower Broke

I confirm

$68 PM9297 Blower Motor

PM9297 does not fit. JB weld it. I am in warranty and won't wait 6 weeks. I jb welded it and it is fine.

 

I was talking to a salesman at Toyota and he said that Toyota would voluntary recall it if there are enough complaints.

 

Does anybody in Southeast Phoenix have a broken A/C blower?
I would like to get one and see if I could make something for it. I have a lathe and good with machining. Center piece could be removed and a metal post adapter placed in there.

 

Six weeks? I dont know if I can drive a Corolla for 6 weeks!

 

"Shower thoughts" Where is the primary point of failure in the plastic fan? From several posted photos, we know what it looks like when it is totally busted and starts rattling around on the shaft, but there has to be a primary failure point that cracks first, and then that crack propagates until the thing totally fails and starts bouncing around on the fan motor shaft.
Someone has likely taken theirs off to just take a look at it and maybe has discovered a preliminary failure point. Why is this important? Because this point is where reinforcement needs to be applied to prevent failure. We all know that the base of the fan/shaft is gusseted with fins, but does it break at the top, and then split downwards, or what?
If anyone has happened to look at theirs and has found a primary failure point prior to the thing going totally tits-up, and has some photos as well, how about posting up your information on this. At least this would tell us where we need to reinforce, and this would be valuable for the crowd that is out of warranty and stuck with either buying very expensive replacement fan motor/fan blade unit, or doing a prophylactic reinforcement, or an effective repair.

I'd be glad to see a few posts on this.

 

Who does that? No one... If you had that forethought you'd not startup on HI... It's thin, cheap ass plastic made in Mexico that can't take the torque of a high fan speed on startup. It's being replaced by the same junk ass shit that will also break if not treated properly. Clamp it or epoxy it and forget about it... Had I known then what I know now, I'd have taken mine off and epoxied the hell out of it before it shattered.

 

Who does that?? People who own Gen 3 Tacomas and read threads like this, that's who. People who feel they could have a potential solution to the issue, rather than rely on Toyota (expensive$$) once they're out of warranty. People like the bulk of the folk who have posted in this thread.

Tell me what you mean by "If you had that forethought you'd not startup on HI" Am I missing a helpful suggestion here that the rest of the Tacoma world is also missing out on? I suppose that HI is high speed, and not the abbreviation for Hawaii, where I live. Yeah, I try to shut off my fan completely when I shut off my engine, and also make sure it's off when I start engine. That appears to be a helpful suggestion, but I'm not sure that I can alway do this, or insure the other people who on occasion use my Truck do the same. Somehow, a design flaw should not have to be compensated for by mandating a behavioral change in the end user.

It's real easy to pull out your cabin filter and look directly at your fan, give it a little inspection and go from there. Post up findings, photos, etc so we know where the reinforcement needs to go. Let me know if I'm missing something here.

So since you're saying "had I known then what I know now, I'd have taken mine off and epoxied....." Now that you DO know, aren't you one of those who would take a look at what condition yours is in presently and decide if you need to do some sort of prophylactic reinforcement? But you DO know how these fail, are you not out of warranty yet? If you are, then you are exactly the person "who would do that." If not, then you're missing something. Sorry, not a personal attack here, but a reality check. Tell me what I'm missing. Your several posts in this thread seem to have a generally helpful flavor to them.

No, I'm not turning into Smitty.

 

You're turning something very simple into something way too complicated. The plastic junk fan can't take the torque if / when the truck is started when the fan speed is left in "HIGH" / HI. Eventually it will fail if you do this and mother Toyota will replace it with the exact same junk. I have a brand new one in a box that's the exact same as the broken one. Repair the broken one or reinforce beforehand to save some headache. I'm just trying to help out future readers of this thread. Should we have to do these precautions? Absolutely not but it is what it is when you're sweating your ass off.

 

Got it, well spoken.

I suppose I grew up having to fix my own stuff and now "preferring" to fix my own stuff. I have accumulated a great deal of knowledge on how things are made, and of course how they fail. I prefer to fix my own stuff, but really don't want to be forced to spend a ton of money to purchase both fan as well as motor when all I want is a fan. I'd like to be able to reinforce my fan, but I'm still on warranty, and would rather not either void that warranty, or prolong the life of a crappy plastic product inadequate for the task and then miss out on the "new improved, upgraded" part that Toyota just has to be coming out with.
While I guess it's no biggie to the Industry, but to the mechanics it's a PITA. They have simply got to know this is a crap part as you say. Just imagine how much of a bigger issue it would be if you had to pull the dash to do this replacement. I would imagine this would encourage Toyota to come up with a more expeditious upgrade, than they do now, and the planned obsolescence of simply "replace with original part until the customer runs out of warranty" and then it's the customer's (customers') problem. There simply has to be an upgrade and at least a TSB forthcoming, or a recall on this. Toyota is a reputable company, we all expect better and I suspect eventually they'll provide it.

The prevailing flavor of this subforum is, "it's under warranty, let them worry about it." Rather, it's "Let's see photos of what you're hauliing in your truck, or let's see photos of your dog with your truck" etc rather than a more technical flavor on maintenance, use, etc. Once our Gen 3s are all out of warranty the flavor of this forum will change to what we seen in Gen 1 and 2.

In the meantime, I'll be looking for failure modes of this fan, and doing as much of my own work as possible, and hoping for a serious upgrade on this product. I kept my '86 Toyota 4X "Gen Zero" for 32 years, I'd like to do that to this Tacoma.

Thanks for all your input to the forum. In the meantime, I'll try to remember to shut off my fan when I turn off the engine; I'm getting pretty good at this already. Hell, I put my seat belt on automatically even if I'm just backing out of my driveway!!

 

It does suck but I'd rather go on my own vs. fighting with the only game in town. It's them or drive 2 hours any direction. It was worth it to me to have one ordered and delivered within 4 days and sit in a box as a spare for if my repair fails. One month in and it's holding w/ the high PSI epoxy. It wouldn't take much for Toyota to fix it but that would be too simple.

 

You can see cracks. Did you/can you photo? Would be nice to see photos of early cracks prior to total failure.

 

Ill be working on the truck later today so Ill take a pic and see if it comes out.

 

Finally got my parts in and done. Service Manager thinks this will probably be a recall. They have had a large amount.

 

I went to pick up my truck after the latest T-SB was installed an turned on my AC and it made a terrible noise. Told the service guy and he said it is a know problem with Toyota. He fixed it with in 2 hours.

 

Going on 5 weeks now waiting for the arrival of a new blower and still nothing....

 

My trucks done after about a week at the dealer, dunno how but i'll take it.

 

Another thread had a guy post that his company made these. Mentioned that the fan wheel was pressed onto the shaft too far, thereby causing premature failure of the fan wheel.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/busted-ac-blower-fan.505647/

 

In a variety of "busted AC fan" threads, I've seen a few photos where the fan crack did not extend all the way to the top of the spindle, implying that the crack starts closer to the base of the fan unit, down where the gussets are-rather than starting at the tip and moving backdown the shaft towards the motor unit. Of course that would suggest that clamping around the top as several of us have done wouldn't offer much of a reinforcement. Another person pulled theirs out to check for cracks, posted photo, his was still fine.

I'm still up for people to pull theirs out, or simply change the cabin filter and take a photo if they see any damage.

 

I took my fan out last night to install a 2-ear Oetiker clamp on it. No obvious signs of stress cracks on the fan. The motor shaft was about half way into the fan, maybe a bit less.

My fan is always on, but I rarely use it on high, and have never started the truck with the fan already set to high.

 

JB weld to reinforce the middle