BMW E36 Blower Fan Installation Tool Set

If your climate control fan squeaks or doesn't work, you may need to replace your blower fan. When we performed this job on our E36 M3, we could not figure out how to remove or install the blower fan through the engine bay access panel. The fan cage is significantly larger than the access panel opening, making the job seemingly impossible. The fan cage needs to be separated from the motor to be able to maneuver the parts in and out of the access panel opening.

There are some blower fans with removable fan cages that would make this job possible, but they were unavailable at the time of writing. We suspect that some people bend the chassis sheet metal out of the way and then bend it back when they are done. We were not okay with doing that to our much-loved M3.

We tried using common tools like jaw pullers, hammers, punches, pry bars, C-clamps and trigger clamps to get the job done, but none of those were able to fit the unique geometry of the situation. We had to develop some custom tools to enable us to perform the job, and we are making them available to the E36 community.

You can see the complete blower fan replacement DIY article here.

Our tools allow your new blower fan to be disassembled in order to be passed through the opening and then reassembled in its final resting place. We bought a Mahle blower fan assembly with fan cages that were advertised as non-removable. The fan cage was press-fit onto the motor shaft and we were able to get the fan cage off safely with our jaw puller. This tool may not work with all blower fans if the fan cage is staked to, molded to or otherwise permanently attached to the shaft.

The disassembly tool is a 4-jaw puller that is custom made to remove the fan cage from the blower motor. We chose 4 jaws instead of 3 jaws to help spread the load across the delicate plastic fan cage. The jaws grip the thicker center of the fan cage so that the skinny spokes do not bear the load. Additionally, the 4 jaws had to be made very thin to fit in-between the spokes of the fan. Our custom puller also has an unconventional spacing to match up with gaps in the 13-spoke fan.

The reassembly tool is also custom-made for reassembling the fan to the blower while inside the HVAC housing. Again, the geometry of the tool is unconventional to work with the 13-spoke design of the fan cage. Even the bolts required unique specifications and are not commercially available. The bolts had to be custom-made for this application.