Hey all. Weird weird blower issue here. 1995 2.3L 5spd ~200k miles

Details:

The blower started going out on me. It'd work, then stop, then work if I turned it off then on. Then sometime it wouldn't start blowing until the car hit a bump or jerked a little when I'd take off. Then it wouldn't hardly blow at all unless I turned it off and on, while driving over bumps [OK, not QUITE....] Then dead.

I should mention, when the blower was working it worked perfectly normally in all speed settings, with normal volume level

After the motor stopped blowing, if it turned the right-hand **** [AC or blower & blend controls] to an AC setting, the compressor kicked in.

So I got a blower, pulled the old one, and before installing the new one, I tested the old blower by hooking it direct to the battery with some 12ga wire. The motor was fine!

The resistor elements looked file, but the connectors where the coils kind of plug in were all pretty rusty. I didn't have a DMM handy, so I used brass paperclips to jump every connection to each other on the plug in the harness, which I think should have made the blower motor run full speed regardless of the dash control setting. Still no blow!

So for now I have a 30amp switch & fuse in the cab wired to 12ga wire hooking the blower motor directly to the battery. It's working great for now. I used interior stranded wire with fire rated insulation, and routed the wire away from most of the heat under the hood... The fuse holder gets a little warm though, and obviously it's not an optimal setup.

QUESTIONS:

1) Is there a blower motor relay? the Haynes manual shows one on the 1994 body wiring diagram, but not the 1995

2) Where is the factory blower motor fuse located, and how many amps is it?

3) Any other ideas as to what the heck the problem could be?

Thanks a million!

-Mark