Viper Climate Control Fan stopped working at any speed, Resistor and Fan good.Need advice.

[jerseydave]

This is the first problem I've experienced with my 04 beast. While driving the climate control fan cuts out, most of the time if I restart the car it will come on for a bit. The resistor was replaced, simply because it was cheap. The fan itself has been tested and is working fine. The problem is the fan will stop getting voltage for no apparent reason. When I restart it, the voltage comes back and it works for a while. I've heard of some issues on other Dodge products with an ignition switch, not sure if thats the same with our snakes or how to test it. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm a bit lost.

 

[Shaggy]

This is the first problem I've experienced with my 04 beast. While driving the climate control fan cuts out, most of the time if I restart the car it will come on for a bit. The resistor was replaced, simply because it was cheap. The fan itself has been tested and is working fine. The problem is the fan will stop getting voltage for no apparent reason. When I restart it, the voltage comes back and it works for a while. I've heard of some issues on other Dodge products with an ignition switch, not sure if thats the same with our snakes or how to test it. Does anyone have any suggestions? I'm a bit lost.

Sorry I don't have a fix but this weird. Never heard of a fan doing this. It would be easier if it never came back on to diagnos but if it comes for a bit each time is weird. Do you think there might be something wrong with the fan itself when fan motor gets hot and just shuts off?

 

[MoparMap]

I almost wonder if the problem is in the switch. I'm fairly sure all the power for the fan still runs through it as I thought I recall it being fairly beefy wires going into the back of the climate controls. I believe it was a shared part with pretty much all Dodge products at the time too, meaning that hopefully it would be cheap enough to get a replacement for as well if it was the issue.

 

[Dan Cragin]

Typically it is the blower resistor or the blower motor. Its sounds more like the blower motor to me. The motor gets water in it and rusts. When that happens it works
at times, until it freezes up.

 

[MoparMap]

True. I had mine stop working and pulled the resistor to find it had popped. Instead of just replacing it and moving on though I pulled the motor and found out the bushings had gotten a little dry and corroded from not being used in a while. Cleaned up the shaft with some emery cloth, lubed the bearings with a little grease, reassembled it and haven't had a problem since. I could see sticky bearings being intermittent.

 

[jerseydave]

Thats the funny thing, the clim control froze even with a brand new motor. I'm stumped. I'm going to test the physical switch next, but that would be incredibly rare to go bad.

 

[MoparMap]

Wow, that is odd. I wonder if the switch contacts are breaking down with heat or something. I'm still amazed that they run blower current through switches nowadays. I get that it's "easier", but I would have thought they'd run PWM or something by now and get the load out of the dash. I know on my old 71 Vette the switch will actually get hot enough to burn your finger. I've been meaning to rewire it so that each speed is its own relay to get the current out of the switch.

 

[jerseydave]

OK, I'm officially at my wits end. I've replaced the blower motor, the resistor and the switch and still it sits off intermittently. I have been able to narrow down that without fail when I place the car in reverse the fan stops blowing. Any ideas?

 

[jerseydave]

You will never believe this. My reverse light switch on my trans went bad. I replaced it and now everything works fine. I hope the engineer that designed that circuit was fired a long time ago. Flat out makes no sense.

 

[steve e]

unfortunately I have seen things like that many times, most of the time its a ground issue and they pick up the ground from the strangest places, sometimes I have just wired in grounds when all else fails.

 

[MoparMap]

I had something similar happen on my 04, sorta. The fog lights were randomly coming on every once in a while. The weird part is when they would come on, the light for the A/C switch would go out. Made no sense to me. I took the turn signal switch apart and found that there was wear on the plastic piece that actuated the fog lights and it was allowing the switch to close without having to actually pull the switch. Took a few tries of different epoxy type materials, but finally got one to stick and it's been fine ever since. I think the A/C light going out had to do with the logic in the circuit or something. For anyone familiar, you can't turn on the fog lights without turning at least the parking lights on. However, when the switch was bad and letting the fog light circuit energize without the parking lights I don't know if it was backfeeding a system somewhere or they were commonly powered or what, but it would take out that light. Never was sure if it actually killed the A/C clutch at the same time or just the indicator light, but I know what you mean about totally different circuits having effects on each other.