2010 Ford Escape Fan Speed Resistor Location, please?
I’ve seen videos for 2001-2004 and 2008. They do not apply to 2010. The resistor board location has moved since 2008.
It used to be just inboard of the cabin fan motor. They were so close that If you wanted to pull the motor, you needed to unplug the wire harness from the resistor board as well as the motor.
Where is the cabin fan resistor card located for the '10 Escape, pray tell?
Top of plenum chamber near blower motor.
Thanks!
Sounds like it’s a hard location to get to. What’s the easiest route, please?
Remove glove box, see what you can see…
This is the card (note the two 5/16 hex head screws), Motorcraft “YH-23 8G1Z-19A706-A Resistor”. $35.14 plus tax at the stealer.
This picture shows the card in place with wiring harness connected. I put a white sheet of paper behind it for contrast and wrapped the connector in blue tape for reference.
Thanks to Caddyman and Ken Green. Quick responses, and good information!
A curse upon the engineer who didn’t understand real-life printed circuit card manufacturing and who didn’t do the power dissipation calculations correctly. In my aerospace days, I learned there is no substitute for walking the factory floor and visiting suppliers to learn how things are in real life.
I’ll also bet that it would be cheaper to remove the PC Card, the 2 connectors, 3 wires in the harness, and upgrade the switch to a oscillator. The result would be a variable speed fan. (A similar switch is already used other places, e.g. instrument panel lights.)
/rant
Where did my picture go?
My June '12 post had a nice picture, and now it’s gone.
FWI, I’m replacing the blower fan resistor card for the 2nd time. Can’t find my first dead one to solder some real resistors on. 
BTW, here are the resistance values supplied by the card, apparently from some service manual. My findings (below) differ.
Looking at the card (into the connector jack), the card has a clipped (45 degree) corner. The pins are numbered 4-3-2-1 from the clipped side to the square side.
2-4 1.2 to 2.6 ohms
2-3 0.3 to 0.4 ohms
2-1 0.9 to 1.0 ohms
My 2010 Escape, post January manufacture date:
Looking into the connector terminals on the card, pins are numbered (square corner to angled corner) 1-2-3-4. Looking into the harness plug with the latch side facing down, pins are numbered (left to right) 1-2-3-4.
pins ohms
1-4 0.3
1-3 0.7
2-3 1.7
The motor, switch, and resistors are on a dedicated 40 amp circuit.
These values are from a Ford issued schematic identifying the card as 19A706, and are very close to what I meter on the (new) card for my 2010.5 Escape.
One thing you should consider when it comes to resistor failures, fan control module failures, and so on is a dragging blower motor.
The motor may sound fine and blow plenty of air but still be dragging. Dragging ups the amount of current needed and that excess current will fry various things along the electrical route.
Some years ago my wife came in one day and said the blower motor had quit momentarily in our Lincoln. When I went to check it worked and sounded fine.
When an ammeter was connected it showed the blower on HIGH speed was pulling 27 amps of current. That will roast a chicken…
Same with many Fords and ignition switch failures. The blower current is routed through the switch instead of a relay and over time a dragging blower can lead to a no-start or random stall because the switch is melting.
The “credit card” blower resistor may have seemed like a good cost saving idea but they have a high failure rate. They don’t last as long as light bulbs in some cases, I have replaced many on cars 3 to 4 years old.
The one on the left is the credit card resistor.
I’m surprised that manufacturers are still using discrete resistors. Much cheaper to use electronics of some sort, such as PWM. And much more reliable. And lower overall power for the same fan speed.
That old one is similar to the speed control on the old golf carts. Really old, like before 1990 or so. When you saw sparks under the cart it was time to tighten the connections.
I’ve noticed that my post attachments disappear with time here too. I had a good vacuum system line drawing for my truck posted here, that has since been disappeared to my chagrin. I presume the Car Talk website computer can only hold so many bytes of uploaded attachments, and when it runs out of space the IT staff erases the older ones in favor of the newer.
I wonder too if things got lost in the switch from the old system to Discourse.