Heater Fan Motor/smell from fan air

[jdugene]

Help! after 2 years in storage, my fan/heater/defog air smells a bit burned. The air flow is great and adjusts with the control but it smells a bit charred. Any idea of the cause? Any ideas on the fix? Do I need to get under the dash to replace the fan motor and, if so, how? Many thanks, John

[dermotbell]

It may be dust and crud burning off the motor?

What about some WD40 to free up the motor. On old Fords I used to spray it down the intake vent.

[Specky]

There's alot of foam around the footwell blowers..

could be worth a quick check..

TTFN

[tweetdriver63]

I was looking for a thread that might provide an answer for me before posting the question, and this one might be appropriate.

Background: The whole time I've had my Elan, the heater/AC blower has only worked on some setting of the fan switch. The settings that appeared to work were; off, 2, and 4. The 1 and 3 settings on the fan switch seemed to do nothing. This was no big deal to me, but this morning I found the fan totally inoperative.

I was going to start a new thread about it, but I saw this one about the smell, and remembered there was a similar smell from mine yesterday. The burnt smell didn't last very long, and at first concerned me that one of my belts was the source. I had a bad alternator in my Impulse that caused belts to go, and when they did you could smell that same smell. In this case, the belts were all fine, and the smell went away.

I was pretty sure my problem was going to be a faulty control switch until I saw this thread. Anybody have any thoughts? Has my blower motor burned out? Do I have a bad control switch?

[GeoffSmith]

Possibly the fan dropper resistors - Check the circuit diagram.

[tweetdriver63]

Possibly the fan dropper resistors - Check the circuit diagram.

Thanks. Looking at the diagram, the circuit for the fan setting 4 (hi speed) completely bybasses the resistors, so if the resistors were bad wouldn't the fan still be working on the 4 setting? I'm not an electrical engineer, so I could be wrong. Right now it seems to me that it would have to be that the whole switch unit is dead, or the motor burned out.

Another question: In most cars with A/C, the A/C having power is dependent on the fan not being off. For example, the Impulse has a push button A/C switch with an LED in it. If you push it to the ON position with the fan set to OFF, the LED doesn't come on, and the A/C stays off until you move the fan out of the OFF position. Is this also true in the Elan?

[GeoffSmith]

Chris, it looks like you're right about position 4 - could be motor failure.

The "blower fan slow relay" appears to activate the fan to a minimum of the slow speed when the A/C is on (although I haven't got A/C so can't confirm).

[tweetdriver63]

My brain kicked in a few minutes ago (sometimes it takes a while for it to get up to normal operating speed on the cold days) and it occured to me to check the fan fuse. Guess what? Right. It's fried. I'll post a pic when I get a chance. I've never seen one quite so fried as this one. I'm going to put a new one in and cross my fingers that whatever caused this one to torch doesn't happen again.

[tweetdriver63]

Sorry no pics. I put a new 20A fuse in the block and it torched immediately. Although there could be a short just about anywhere, it seems even less likely to me now that it would be resistors. fortunately, it also seems less likely the motor burned out. Is that a logical thought?

I'm more inclined now to think it's the switch, or possibly, since we had major rains night before last (tornadoes, etc), and it is an Elan, with all the problems associated with seals, the fuse block itself could have gotten to H2O on it. It's the one on the passenger side kick panel just forward of the door.

[GeoffSmith]

Water is unlikely to blow a 20a fuse. I'd suggest pulling out the two relays and disconnecting the switch then making some resistance measurements or, if you haven't a DMM, try earthing the various points via a 12V lamp.

[tweetdriver63]

Water is unlikely to blow a 20a fuse. I'd suggest pulling out the two relays and disconnecting the switch then making some resistance measurements or, if you haven't a DMM, try earthing the various points via a 12V lamp.

Sounds like it's "to the shop" with it. All that is beyond me.

[jdugene]

Solution! I don't recall where on this site I saw the advice to look under the right wheel well (remove the black wheel well insert) for the foam piece that connects the intake duct under the bonnet and the intake duct just before the fan motor. The other person said this foam piece had disintigrated and allowed water and stuff to enter from nominally inside the wheel well.

So I checked this. Sure enough, while the car was in storage, some rodent had chewed through the foam and snuggled nicely into a nest built right on top of the fan motor. Nice accommodations for a rodent, but hard on the system. So I cleaned the nest out and as per the other's suggestion, cut a section of inner tube from a 14/15" tube (13" tube would be better -- perhaps from a motorcycle) and zip-tied it in. The smell came back once or twice more, but I think the problem is solved. While there is a little bit of an inner tube smell -- I know where this comes from and it isn't intrusive. I also get a LOT more air flow. Reaching into these ducts was hard on my hands and wrists so I rigged up a vacuum cleaner with a 3 foot section of garden hose duct taped to the vacuum cleaner hose. This hose was flexible enough to reach into all the nooks and suck out all the junk. Viola! back to a full-up Elan.

[jdugene]

I forgot to add that I used marine stainless steel screws and washers for holding the bottom of the wheel well arch plastic piece on. The old ones were rusty when I removed them for the first time years ago and, now, having used stainless steel, they come right off.
John