I hear you. I had a fan module go bad on my V70 and I had to buy the whole shootin' match. Now the fan motor on my wife's S80 is getting noisier every year, but I think I'll pick one or two up at the pick-n-pull and see if can put together at least one good assembly. Was it difficult to marry-up the module to the motor?

Oh BTW, I had another thought. Since Klaus was nice enough to point out it's the ECM that controls the fan and not the CEM, I'm wondering if this is another case where re-seating the ECM in it's connector might improve communication. I had a case of chronic throttle module error codes on the S80 and it turned out to be the ECM connection, but then my car is older than yours (2005).

Keep us posted as to what you find the problem to be.