Dead Fan Clogged Extruder

After a month of great prints, I went out to print today. I loaded the file and started everything preheating. Once I hit print, everything seemed to be going great but only intermittent blobs of PLA we're coming out. I aborted the print and tried extruding with the z axis raised up. A opulent small spurts came out. I retracted and reinserted the filament but it wouldn't feed and then just stopped. I could tell it wasn't entering the extruder.
I have a Solidoodle 3 I have been using for a year and it clogs the extruder about every 4 months. I was pretty sure that is what I was seeing, even though it is with PLA instead of abs like on the SD3.
so while pondering how best to clear the extruder, I noticed that the small fan on the front of the extruder wasn't turning. I tried to turn it by hand and it was obvious that it was dead. That lead me to my 6 hour research session through all the trouble shooting threads. And I think I know what happened. With the fan dead, the heat was able to move up the extruder higher than normal. Which would lead to the filament softening before it should. Which leads to the extra hot filament to work up the barrel until it gets to a cooler section and then it cools and hardens, stoping the new filament from entering, and causing one heck of a jam!
So with the help gleaned from the threads here, I removed the head and tried to clean it out. I haven't made much progress. The barrel is still full of PLA and I have a nice burn on my finger from the hot wire I used to insert into the barrel to try to clean out the filament.
You all have been so great. I thank you and hope you might have some more suggestions on cleaning our this mess.

P.S. I already submitted a request for a new fan.