Blower motor installation tip

[Morgan in AR]

Hopefully this tip can help someone else out. Let me premise this by saying that I hope I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. It's possible that there's a better way to do this and I didn't know about it.

I set out to fix the heater on my 65 c20 today. I ran a hot wire directly from the battery to the blower motor, and the motor didn't spin. I thought to myself "what luck. The motor is bad, this will be an easy fix!". O'Reilly had one in stock. Even luckier. I took the old one out. It came out so easy, I didn't pay much attention to orientation or anything. The squirrel cage came right off. I thought "Wow! I've never fixed something so simple that will make such a difference in my daily driver."

Then I went to reinstall....The original motor probably fit several applications, so it had lots of extra holes in it. The replacement probably fits even more applications, so it had lots of extra mounting holes. Holding the motor in place with one hand, and trying to start the quarter inch long screws with the other hand (all while not knowing which holes to use) is quite difficult. I might get one started, but have it in the wrong hole, so none of the other holes lined up.

This went on for longer than I care to admit on a public forum. Persistence wasn't paying off. Rage and profanity were only yielding marginal results. I was starting to weigh my options. I could take the whole housing apart. I decided not to, since the heater core was 54 years old and not leaking. Seems like a can of worms. My next thought was to remove the engine and turn the truck upside down for easy access. This also seemed problematic.

I finally thought it would be easier if there were studs instead of short screws to hold the motor in. I found some sheetrock screws that threaded into the holes on the housing easily with my fingers. Next, I cut the heads off of those screws. It was easy to line up the mounting holes on the motor now. I slid the motor over the "studs", and one by one replaced the studs with the quarter inch screws. Finally, I threw the cut off screws into the back of my broken down 96 dodge pickup. (I'm sure everyone has one).

The heater works great now. It was welcome after feeding cows in the damp Arkansas cold today.

[AcampoDave]

Darn good idea. You're a smarter man than I. I pulled the box in frustration after only a couple of minutes trying.

[1Loud63PU]

Nice tips!
I just did this today and fought about an hour getting it all done.
I did not have any spare screws to use your idea, but what I did was I pulled out my phone and used the camera sort of at an angle to see what was going on down there and that helped out a lot.