Air only coming out of rear vents
 

I have a 2006 BMW X5 3.0i and today when I started my vehicle up in 80 degree Fahrenheit I noticed there was no air coming from the front vents. In fact no air coming from the floor vents or the top defroster vents. Just only the rear vents. Is this a final stage resistor? Or do these E53s have blend doors that could be the problem? The climate control panel works perfectly I tried max a/c button and front defrost button and nothing no air at all.

On my facelift 3.0 and I assume yours too, the rear vent has its own motor under the center console box.

The pre-facelift appears to get its air from the fan up front.

So yes it looks like your blower under the dash is not working.

Could be resistor but given the panel can cause this too I'd hook it up to diagnostics to be sure, if you can.

EDIT: Could be blower motor itself too. And I've been guilty of overlooking popped fuses also lol

There's a cheat sheet you can short out the right pins on the FSU and it'll blow full power to test if it's the blower.


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Do you know which pins to short out. I don’t have wiring diagrams available.

Yes mine is facelift LCI as it’s an 06. I will check fuses tonight and pull final stage. I am just not sure with my panel being completely operational if this means it is final stage resistor. I thought when the final stage goes out the panel goes out too.

FSU goes out usually only symptoms are missing fan speed or kills battery. I don't think panel gets power though it. I don't recall which pins but it's been posted here a few times. I would ask chat GPT


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IIRC final stage can also fail by totally cutting AC blower power. I think this happened to me on an E46 a very long time ago. It didnt take out the panel, after the FSU change it all worked.

You could also give 12v to the blower to rule it out.

Is it possible to reach the fan by pulling out the center vents? A screwdriver can be used to spin the blower motor. Or at least tap the motor to kick start it. Replacing the blow motor does look fun.

Use a long blow pipe on your compressor and yes it's as much fun as master bating with a cheese grater.

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Also if it’s fine for now but just barely squeaks, grease somewhere to make her happy? is there any way to combat the squeak?

Squeak is really only from bearing failure. It would be a crazy amount of work to get to where you could lubricate and that would be temporary.

My 2011 squeaks a little at certain ambient temps and fan speeds. Fortunately about 20 fan speeds and it only happens about 3x a year.


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No way to combat the squeak. The blower motor is on borrowed time. Mine mostly squeaks at low speeds for a few seconds. I run mostly at the first two/three bars. At 42F A/C temps, higher fan speeds freeze up my knuckles really fast.

You can mix some ambient so you can have comfortable temp top to bottom. One of my favorite things about e53


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