'03 XC70 heater blower, resistor, or both?

[Rabid Koala]

I used the Behr fan motor, so far about 2.5-3 years with fine results. Mine started to make bearing noise, I did the resistor at the same time to avoid doing the job twice.

[Silvestris66]

OK, I'm going to order a replacement blower. On the XC70, do you have to break off one of the blower housing tabs to remove it without removing the dash? I see this mentioned in discussions of replacing the blower in an XC90

[hoonk]

On the XC70, do you have to break off one of the blower housing tabs to remove it without removing the dash? I see this mentioned in discussions of replacing the blower in an XC90

No - all of the bolts are accessible and could take less than 10 minutes to remove the fan (from personal experience many times) - only on the xc90 does the wheel well interfere with removal and to do it correctly you must loosen the the heater/ac box to be able to get to all of the bolts. (which means removal of the dashboard on an xc90)

[Silvestris66]

I replaced the motor yesterday, not as hard as I thought. Since the problem was intermittent, we'll see if it's permanent.

For anyone else doing this, prepare for some deteriorated foam to fall down when you remove the panels. Have a vacuum cleaner handy so that it doesn't make a mess. In my case, one of the plastic grips broke off the socket joint of the glove box strut when I removed it, so I'm going to have to order another one of those, too.