Thread: '97 GT fan blowing electrical burning smell and smoke from vents when fan turned up

With the fan on 1 or 2, everything seems to work fine. A/C blows cold(ish) and heater blows hot. But if I turn the fan to 3, (no matter the temp setting or if the a/c is on or off) I start getting a slight electrical burning smell. Turn it to 4 and the smell gets worse as well as slight smoke coming out of the vents. If I turn it to 5, heavy smoke starts pouring in and after a few seconds the fan slows way down. I can go back to 2 and all is well again. I haven't kept it on 4 or 5 for more than a few seconds for fear of starting a wire fire. What could be causing this? Resistor? Blower motor? What wire could be burning, if a wire at all?

Thanks for you help!

Just went through this with my car. No smoke, but did get the electrical smell. Fan would only power up on position 5 after a short while. I picked up a new OEM fan and resistor from a distributor on Amazon.com - A little over $60 for both parts plus shipping. Might need to be a little bit of a contortionist to get under the glove box, but the replacement wasn't very hard for either of these.