The previous owner of this 1996 Explorer XLT experienced the fan-only-works-on-high problem and had it fixed once. It failed on her again before I bought it from her. I lived with it for a while and then had it fixed again.

While driving home on a hot Houston day last week, I stopped to get gas after about a 25 min highway drive during which the A/C was blowing cold and strong. When I started it up again and pulled away from the station, I smelled something burning (like a resistor or circuit board or something electronic, you know that smell) and then saw smoke coming out from under the dash. I noticed the A/C was dead, verified that nothing was working, and turned it off. I pulled into a parking lot and shut the vehicle down. After several minutes when I realized the car was not going to ignite, I started it up again and made it home (A/C off, of course) without a problem.

The previous owner mentioned no smoke or smell during her two failures. In addition, I happened to hear a new squeaky noise down in that area in the days preceding the failure (fan motor?). Needless to say, I think I am dealing with a problem larger than blower resistors here, but the history must be mentioned. I don't know enough about how all of this can be connected, and that is why I need your help.

If it does turn out to the blower motor resistors again, what keeps making these things fail? There must be something upstream that keeps putting stress on this system. What could that be? Does it sound like I am just going to have to replace the blower resistors every once in a while?

If the smoke tells you that I have had a major failure here, what do think it is? Is there something I can do find out what it may be without causing further damage. For instance, is there a way to show that a fan motor has failed without putting power to the system?

Thanks in advance for all of your help,

Mike