Date:         Mon, 18 Aug 2003 10:27:17 -0700
Reply-To:     TJ Hannink <tjhannink@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         TJ Hannink <tjhannink@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      A/C and radiator fan issues
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

I returned home from a 2-week project in SoCal last
Friday evening and found that neither the A/C or
radiator fan was working on the van. My wife said that
the A/C had quit working earlier in the week so she
quit driving the van.

Fixing the radiator fan was straight-forward, fuse F1
had blown. The fuse itself had bubbled and melted some
of the the lower left corner of the fuse block before
it blew. I have a new fuseblock and will be installing
it this week, but first need to find a way to
dissapate some of the heat from the fuse block. Any
ideas? I was using contact cleaner and lubricant on
the connectors, but it didn't seem to help. My guess
is that the constant use of the radiator fan on low
with the A/C on and the increase in the amount time
that the 2nd stage fan speed is engaged due to the
higher operating pressures of R-134a have taken their
toll on the 15 year old wiring.

In order to get the A/C working, I looked into the
fuse and buss in the 'D' pillar and found that the
supply side of the 50A fuse holder had come loose from
the plastic and the fuse had tore. I had already
repaired it once, but it seems that the wiring for the
system is woefully undersized for use in my geographic
area. I had already replaced the evap blower feed
wires and fuses with more substantial pieces, so I
decided to upgrade the main supply wiring as well.

I found a large 8 awg inline fuse holder with a
section of stranded 8 awg for an audio system power
connection at my local electronic surplus store a
while back and decided to replace the original feed
wire and fuse holder with it. I was able to use the
existing wire to pull the new one through the wiring
harness, then I soldered new gold ring terminals on
both ends to connect to both the alternator terminal
and the wires from the other side of what was left of
the fuse holder.

I bought some of the large audio-type 40A fuses and
the system is running fine now. All the wiring still
gets very hot even with the new wiring so it looks
like I will have to keep an eye on the new components
to see how they hold up.

I'll try to post some photos of the insides of the
fuse blocks, both old and new; I was pretty impressed
when I popped the front cover off my replacement unit.

Anyway, it looks like I will be working around Pomona,
CA all next week, so if anyone wants to have a beer
and show off their van, let me know.

Thanks for listening,



=====
TJ Hannink
Goldibox - 1987 Vanagon Camper, Wolfsburg Edition
Winter Park, Florida
http://home.earthlink.net/~tjhannink/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wolfsburg_campers
http://photos.yahoo.com/tjhannink [Vanagon] Album

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com