I have had a wild time with my 93 850 climate control. About a month ago, my climate ecu just blew and smoke came out. Not good! OK, I have a spare 93 parts car, so I went ahead and bought a new bosch blower motor from Eeuropean and took the climate control out of the parts car. Put in the resistor from parts car, new motor, and replacement ecu - nothing. No function at all. Hmmm. So, I took out the parts car resistor and put in the old heater blower motor from the parts car to test it - it worked fine. Turns out the new bosch motor was defective (box had been opened before I got it - was re-wrapped inside - I hate that) - nothing, so I sent it back and left my used blower (about 150k on that parts car)in the system. Everything is back in and I starting driving the car - two days later - the parts car replacement ecu pops and smoke comes out - ahgggggg!

At that point, I had to find another cheaper ecu on ebay and figure out what happened. Took the my local indy garage. The local garage thought it was a short in the original resistor that was smoking the ecu. We nuked that resistor. They put the parts car resistor back in with the ebay ecu and it works ok initially - but I started to hear a chirp from the used blower motor. Was not happy at that prospect but it was working and the blower worked on all speeds but not as vigorous as my two other 850s. Hmmm. Garage charges me $140 which is what it cost time wise to take out the blower motor. OK, but not thrilled with the function of the fan speed.

After a few days the blower is putting out less and less volume. High setting on the fan is like 2 on my other cars - barely putting out air, but still responds to resistor, just not right. I took it back and they think the fan speed is related to the car speed and computer on the auto climate control, and it is still working but wimpy. My two other 850s have manual climate and blow like a monsoon on 4. This car is blowing like a kid making bubbles? So what to do?

My choices are to buy another new blower motor and try it first - and maybe a new resistor or possibly another ECu? The good news is that it stopped burning out the ecu, bad news is not enough air flow. I am thinking the used parts car blower motor is the first suspect and hate to buy both the resistor and motor. FCP has the motor for 99 and resistor for 109. I can do all this myself as I have become very good at taking out an 850 blower - I have had it out three times and the garage twice.

The ebay climate ecu is not blinking or throwing any codes, my old one did and I ignored it for a long time. Winter is here and I need to fix this problem. I just threw $240 into the car for an axle and some sway bar links, plus 140 for previous repair on the blower - I can't fault my garage because they were dealing with my used parts, which is always a crapshoot and they treat me well. They even put on a used front axle I had, rather than a new one.

Should I start with the new blower motor (again) and see what happens??? At least taking out an 850 heater motor is about an hour, as opposed to 10 hours for the 240s!! I did miss the 240s because you could get a blower motor for under $40, but you had to take out the entire dash to change it - almost as bad as an 850 evaporator! I need to do that on this 93 too. And the heater core is still limping along, so I should count my blessings.

This car runs too well to not keep - everything else is fine - 184K and the engine and trans both purr! I did see a 98 v70 with 100k for 4995 at my local volvo dealer - very tempted.

Bob Weber
Hamilton Ohio
64 Volvos since 1979