I just got done replacing the blower motor and fan assembly on my ’95 Volvo 850 Turbo Sedan. I bought it from pioneerimportedparts on eBay Motors. It was $129.00 plus $6.00 shipping. It came in three days by UPS, so I was very pleased with this transaction. He has had over 3000 transactions and a 100% satisfaction rating. I got the information on where to order this from another person here on the Brickboard. IPD wanted $245 for the same exact Behr blower motor assembly.

Now for the replacement of the unit. I picked up a Chilton’s manual from the library, but the instructions in it leave a lot to be desired as far as any detail on the process. So if you are facing doing this job, here is the step by step procedure I went through to do the replacement:

1. Disconnect the negative battery cable. (This is to prevent problems with the SRS system. Be sure to have your radio code, because you will need it when you reconnected the battery cable.)
2. Remove the following:
• The three passenger side soundproofing panel screws and panel below the glove box. Most of these screws are Torque type screws and I did not have a Torque set. If you don’t want to buy one of these sets and you have an Allen wrench set, one of them will fit the head of the Torque screws and remove them. I also had a small screwdriver that spanned the one of the slots in the Torque head to remove and replace them.

• The glove box door screws to get access to the hinges. The hinge pins can be removed with needle nose pliers. Then take small jewelers type screwdriver and slide it up along the bottom side of the glove box door limit arms to remove the inside part of the glove box door. Be careful with this, since the limit arms are plastic and could be easily broken.
• Now you can slide the interior glove box assembly out. I went ahead and removed the two latch bracket screws and latch bracket to avoid doing any damage to the box.
• Now comes the most difficult part of the process. You have to drop the right side of black support brace for the air bag module to get access to the screws for the blower motor unit and to remove it. The bolts that fasten it to the frame are difficult to get to and are very tight. They require a #12 metric socket. I used a 3/8” drive socket set with the straight handle and it worked great. But I found out how to get easy access to the bolts. You can pop the trim panel loose on the right side of the floor area just below where the extension of the dash panel goes into it. This exposes a screw that you can remove. Once this screw is removed, you can spring the bottom leg of the dash extension back far enough that you can insert the socket in and remove the two black support brace bolts. I just used a screw driver through the hole in the socket handle to turn and loosen the bolts. Once you get these two bolts out, you can maneuver this brace down far enough to get access to the five blower motors screws in the black plate and the electrical connections. There was a yellow electrical connector clipped onto the right end of the brace that I unplugged from the brace so it didn’t get damaged.
• Now you can get to the electric connections on the back of blower motor. There is one double connector that slides out of clip on the blower motor. (You can take a look at the new blower motor and see which way it slides out to disconnect it.) Then the main electrical connection can be unplugged. There is a big gray wiring harness with a lot of small wires that also clips into the back of the blower motor. Just pull forward on this to unplug it. It just slides into a housing on the back of the blower assembly.
• Now you can remove the five screws that hold the blower assembly in place. Once you get these screws out, you can work the blower motor and fan assembly out. Be careful at this point as you work it around the wiring harness.
• To reinstall, just reverse the process. This took me about three hours to do, but I wasted a lot of time trying to get to the mounting bolts on the SRS support brace. Once I figured out getting the lower kick panel for the dash out of the way, it was clear sailing. I think I could easily do it again in less than two hours.

The part you refer to as the airbag module support brace is actually the knee bolster. On my '95 850 there are four round cutouts on the underside of the bolster at each end that give you access to the nuts that secure the bolster to the frame. You will need at least a 6 inch extension and a 13mm socket. Once you remove the nuts the entire bolster can be removed from the instrument panel. This will give you unrestricted space to remove the fan itself. You can use a regular T25 Torx screwdriver to unfasten the four screws on the fan flange. Better yet is a Torx bit and ratchet since the two right side screws are partially blocked by a bracket.

Thanks...nice write-up. Did you take any pictures?
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1998 S70 T5 Emarald Green Metallic (125K), 2004 V70 2.5T Ruby Red (45K), Previous Owner of Black '94 850 Turbo Wagon (Sold at 140K and miss her). My cars have been running so well lately they've got me worried.

I was going to take some pictures, but there is not much room to get a camera into the area where you have to work. There was one picture in the Chilton's manual and it really didn't help much at all. So I thought it was easier to just write things out step by step. I used to write technical manuals for IBM equipment, so this was a familiar process for me.

If anyone has any questions on the process, just shoot me an email and I will try to help you.

Thanks...I copied your write-up to a Word file. HOpe you don't mind. Although mine is for an S70, they are similar enough and I feel this R&R is coming on within the next few months...already starting to hear the fan blades on different speeds.
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1998 S70 T5 Emarald Green Metallic (125K), 2004 V70 2.5T Ruby Red (45K), Previous Owner of Black '94 850 Turbo Wagon (Sold at 140K and miss her). My cars have been running so well lately they've got me worried.