My blue baby has been without a properly functioning blower motor switch for a couple of years now and I'm getting tired of driving around with the windows down and a squeegy on the dash.

A few years back my buddy replaced the original (broken) motor with a used one from a later year (1984? maybe?). I don't quite know what he did, he jerry-rigged something so that it just had one speed with an on-off switch because "the wiring was different". Taking a look behind the panel now it seems he cut most of the wires leading into the original 4-way switch, leaving two wires which he ran to the on-off switch.

The problem is that the motor runs WAY too fast, so there's no heat, tons of noise, and it melts any switch I put on there. I think he must have taken out the resisitor or something. Anyhow, I'm not a mechanic and I kinda dread taking the whole dash apart (and getting under the steering wheel) so I was hoping to insert some sort of variable resistor (plus on-off switch) for it, since I have the two wires already outside the dash (in case of emergency I can connect them for instant defoggery).

Suggestions for how to go about this? Is this feasible? My car is in pretty rough shape and I'm just looking for an easy solution. I live in Vancouver, BC, and I'm not sure where to get parts; I checked The Source (formerly RadioShack) but they didn't have any beefy looking resistors, and my local autoparts place came up empty-handed.

I'm handy with a soldering iron and I've taken university level physics....so I think I could do something here...but I don't know what resistors I'd need. Help?

Also - what manual would you folks recommend for a non-mechanic wanting to learn how to fix this car?