Heater blower gone bang

Got a 2008 Freelander 2.
Driving along today and the heater blower started humming. Very quickly it got deafeningly loud and then the whole car started vibrating. Switched the blower off and back to smooth silence.
When I took a look under the bonnet, I can see that part of the fan has disappeared and it looks like a stick had got in there and jammed itself destroying the fan.
Not a major problem, I thought, until I looked at the Haynes manual. According to that, you have to take the whole dash out to get to the heater motor!
Has anybody taken the motor out without removing the dash? Any hints (apart from not switching the heater fan on).

I do not know about the freelander 2 but you have to on the freelander 1 I would imagine it is the same thing dash out

Not really what I wanted to hear but hey ho!
The engineer who designed it obviously wasn't going to do his own repairs was he.

teddywood1 said:

I do not know about the freelander 2 but you have to on the freelander 1 I would imagine it is the same thing dash out

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You don't need to remove the dash to get the booster fan out of the FL1 heater. It comes out through the driver's side footwell. It takes 30 minutes tops to replace.

The FL2 fan is behind the dash and is much more challenging to remove.