Mice building nest inside my 2001 S-10 blower

Sounds like you either have a bad bearing in the blower motor or crap trapped in the squirrel cage...mice are bad about getting inside the duct work and building nests...either way it probably wiped out a bearing

sounds like a mouse attack to me. mice get into the heater vents and blower motor cage and make nests. those can throw your blower motor out of balance, thus resulting in the noise and then the motor just gets jammed and stops operation. but it could be just the blower motor failure it self. have it checked.

I know this is pretty old, but I've been able to get to my blower motor WITHOUT removing the entire dash. If you take out your glove box and shine a light up above where the air filter is, you can see a round plastic piece with a wire and a little tab on it. Just push the tab, rotate the piece and disconnect the wire. The trick is getting it around your side vent tube, but with a little wiggling not too hard. I live in the country and had to fish 2 hand fulls of insulation out of my blower motor due to mice.8 screws hold the glove box on.

it is common for mice to build a nest in the hvac box and get caught in the fan remove the fan motor and inspect it

the nest has to be manually removed
ps: get a cat!!!

I have seen that most of the time rodents will build a nest right in the middle of the fan on the blower motor. Remove the blower motor and clean the blower fan and clean out the air duct from the blower motor while it is out of the vehicle.

if you live in wooded area sometimes mice go inside cars and build nests in the heater blower under dash they build nests with grass and paper and garbage id did a couple of these jobs up in the north east

Take it to a repair shop and have them put up on a lift, have them check the fire wall that's where the wire's and hoses go through the inside of the van to make sure it's all seal, also have them check under the van to make sure that all the rubber plugs are ok. Goodluck

under the glove box,pull out plastic push pin holding plastic duct work and remove duct piece,three screws holding blower motor cover,remove them,then disconnect blower motor wires at connector,remove three screws holding motor up in place.
watch the mice don't fall on you!

You should be able to remove just the fan blower from under the passenger side dash and clean out the housing and the blower wheel