koroshiya

i'm a newbie. thanks for not bashing me.

i have a '97 civic dx coupe. i have a problem, and none of the dealers/repair places i called in the bay area/santa cruz area can give me an estimate or any idea of what's going on. so, i turn to you, since you seem like a smart group with stuff like this, and i'd really like not to get screwed, considering i'm female and this tends to happen, no matter how much i know or don't know.

anyway. moving on.

in my car, the heat works, the a/c works, the temperatures are fine. i have no problem with any of the air direction switches, or any of that. my problem is the fan that blows air out.

nothing happens anymore when i move the fan switch from 0-4, the fan doesn't blow anymore. actually, i shouldn't say that - it blows incredibly intermittently. when it's incredibly hot in the car (which isn't hard, since the fan doesn't work, if it's hot outside, you can't cool the car down inside), the fan will work until you turn the a/c on and it cools slightly, then the fan dies again.

with summer coming up and considering our recent heat wave, i can see this becoming incredibly annoying.

so, any help would be good. is this a common problem on the civic? is it a fuse, a switch? is it something i could do myself? i'm a hardware technician, and can follow directions and figure stuff out, but at the same time, voltage running through me isn't my idea of a hot friday night, so if i need to get someone to do it, i will. any ideas on what's causing it? it was kind of a gradual thing, it didn't just die one day, if that helps.

thanks so much in advance. i appreciate any advice/guidance i can get. like i said, i don't want to end up paying $1000 for a repair that would normally cost $200. thanks!