Thank you for the responses and suggestions - if I do end up replacing the motor, I will most likely go with a Spal. So far I have found that you CAN get the blower motor off of the evaporator box if you pull the unit out a little ways from the firewall. The freon hoses are rubber and will allow you some wiggle room. Four screws and it is out. Getting it back in will be another story - I'm sure. I am working on two theories at present. The first is that it may not be the motor at all, but the way that the motor was mounted. The bracket that holds the motor into the air box has four screws, tow on each side. The two lower screws have two purposes one is to hold the motor in the center of the airbox by clamping the motor into the bracket and the second is to hold the evaporator/fan box in the bracket on the firewall. My bolts were a little loose when I took them out and there was some rubbing visible inside the airbox. This may be all that was wrong. The second would be to suspect the motor, but I will nee to run it on the bench for a while to see how many amps it draws over time. On a quick test, holding the motor in one hand and attaching power with the other, I registered about 8.25 amps with the fan motor on high. None of my test leads got hot. I did take the three speed switch apart and found there are no resistors inside the switch - it simply connects power to one, two or three terminals. Three for high, two for med, one for low. Next project will be to wire the motor to the switch and run the fan for a while on each speed and see what happens.
