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one job, but a big job
Oct. 16th, 2020 06:06 pmI took today off as my Indigenous People's Day since I had to work on Monday. It rained last night and most of today, so it wasn't an ideal day off, but there are always things to do. I decided to take on the heater in the van.
This summer when I was working on electrical I found one circuit which had a fuse with an excess rating. The way my fuse box is designed, before that fuse kicked out, the fuse box would melt. I removed it and placed the correct fuse in its place, knowing that the previous owner had probably put that big fuse in there because the correct sized one was blowing. Last weekend when I was testing the cooling system I turned on both heaters. The rear worked fine. The front blew the fuse. A very common problem which could indicate several things (bad blower motor, bad heater resistor, bad wiring) all of which live in the heater box. Getting to the heater box requires pulling the dash.
It took most of the day to get everything disassembled and pull the heater box. Some rodents had made a home in the heating ducts. It wasn't as packed as some I've seen, but there were plenty of acorn bits, paper bits, and bits that rodents leave behind after they've had acorns. Two problems were evident once I opened up the heater box. The rodents had eaten much of the insulation off of the wires inside the box and the blower motor which had a few acorn bits in it, wouldn't turn. Even after cleaning out the acorn bits, the motor would barely turn by hand even with excessive force. So it was probably the motor that was blowing the fuse, the wires were just waiting to start a fire somewhere down the road.
I've ordered blower motor, heater core, and resistor. I might have been able to get away with the old heater core, but I really don't want to do this job again anytime soon.
I've done a lot of washing and scrubbing. I'll probably do another round once things dry out and I can see the ick. Then there are some bits of foam gasket that I can replace while I'm waiting for the parts to arrive.
So once again, I dug into an area and found a place where a fire could start at any time. Glad I took the time.
This summer when I was working on electrical I found one circuit which had a fuse with an excess rating. The way my fuse box is designed, before that fuse kicked out, the fuse box would melt. I removed it and placed the correct fuse in its place, knowing that the previous owner had probably put that big fuse in there because the correct sized one was blowing. Last weekend when I was testing the cooling system I turned on both heaters. The rear worked fine. The front blew the fuse. A very common problem which could indicate several things (bad blower motor, bad heater resistor, bad wiring) all of which live in the heater box. Getting to the heater box requires pulling the dash.
It took most of the day to get everything disassembled and pull the heater box. Some rodents had made a home in the heating ducts. It wasn't as packed as some I've seen, but there were plenty of acorn bits, paper bits, and bits that rodents leave behind after they've had acorns. Two problems were evident once I opened up the heater box. The rodents had eaten much of the insulation off of the wires inside the box and the blower motor which had a few acorn bits in it, wouldn't turn. Even after cleaning out the acorn bits, the motor would barely turn by hand even with excessive force. So it was probably the motor that was blowing the fuse, the wires were just waiting to start a fire somewhere down the road.
I've ordered blower motor, heater core, and resistor. I might have been able to get away with the old heater core, but I really don't want to do this job again anytime soon.
I've done a lot of washing and scrubbing. I'll probably do another round once things dry out and I can see the ick. Then there are some bits of foam gasket that I can replace while I'm waiting for the parts to arrive.
So once again, I dug into an area and found a place where a fire could start at any time. Glad I took the time.
