Blower Motor Replacement

I have to replace my blower motor and I have a couple questions.
What is the deal with the brittle rubber shroud around the blower ac area? Do i need to keep it or replace it?
I read a thread on another forum that says to take the fender off to do the shroud and the motor. I wanna do this right because it gets fuckin cold here, but I have a feeling there is a better way of doing it.

Also, because my AC doesn't work anyway, i was thinking about scrapping the whole AC blower motor housing and swapping in a non ac housing to clean up the area a little bit. Will the non AC housing just bolt in place of the old one?
Is it possible to find a non AC blower housing?

Harley did a how-to on deleting the A/C.

http://protourings10.com/index.php?topic=348.0
http://www.pro-tourings10.com/index.php?topic=348

Sometimes the non-A/C blower boxes come up on ebay but they're more rare for 2nd gens.

On my old T/A someone had cut a circular access hole in the fender well that made replacing the blower simple but I'm not sure if that works for s10s!

I Like the way that looks without the accumulator housing.

I gotta dig in to this whole system. My selector isnt working and I feel cold air coming in from somewhere. If I can find the ac delete housing by sunday, im just going to do it, but what about that rubber housing cover
 

I had to do the blower motor on my blazer with a/c a few months ago. It was really quite simple. The recommended method is to cut the existing shroud and reseal it after the install. There is a line on the shroud itself that says cut here or has scissors indicating where to cut. It's as easy as taking an exacto knife and following the dotted line. Once the panel is removed you replace the motor (3 bolts?) and use a silicone to seal the panel back to it. There is also 3 bolts if I remember correctly that hold the panel in place. Total time was about an hour maybe hour and a half. It would be easier to do with the fender off but it's not necessary.

This is the way the GM manual recommends to replace it. I think it would be much nicer to replace the entire shroud but I can attest to the fact doing it the above way works well and is an easy fix.

I see the heavy duty heater housings on a regular basis at the local pull it yourself yard.  I actually grabbed an extra for mock up and it is the one you see bolted onto my firewall/floor jig.

I do actually suggest pulling the fender.  I tried without and you can ask my friend who helped me, it was neither pretty for the truck or for my sanity.  I'm at the point with these trucks where pulling the front sheet metal is a regular repair procedure.  Not because it is necessarily easy, but because it makes working on things under hood so much easier.  It is worth it.  Pulling the hood isn't a bad deal either.

From the top of my head I'd say the rubber shroud is just extra insulation.  On most cars at this age it deteriorates anyway, so I personally wouldn't be too worried about it.  It isn't structural at least.

Harley, any chance you still have a copy of the AC delete how to? The original link is dead.

My compressor and accumulator are long gone but I'd like to swap to the non-AC heater box (I have the box and blower motor).

Try:

http://www.pro-tourings10.com/index.php?topic=348

I just added the dash and had to hit the back button after it forwarded me to the home page haha I'll update the link above too.

Sweet, thanks! I started in on this last night but I quite before I had to deal with the bottom bolts on the heater box. The one behind the block wasn't too bad with a gear wrench. I've never tried removing a fender but it looks like that may be the easiest way to get at those bottom ones. Is is possible to just drop the inner fender to get at them? I was also thinking of just removing the blower unit and then smashing the box to get at the lower bolts, it's not like I'll be able to sell it.

I've learned from trial and error to pull bumper, pull hood, pull fender, and enjoy the freedom. To me all of those are easy enough to pull that it isn't worth cussing, swearing, squeezing my hands, and scratching up paint trying to get around it.

Inner alone isn't too bad, but from past memories I always had to move the outer to get at all the bolts.