Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:18:14 -0600
Reply-To: Tom Hargrave <thargrav@HIWAAY.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Tom Hargrave <thargrav@HIWAAY.NET>
Subject: Re: heater fan whine
In-Reply-To: <008d01ca9ebe$7e8fd250$6401a8c0@PROSPERITY>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
There are two issues with fan motors & not just the ones installed in
Vanagons.
The first issue is a dry bearing - these are the ones that you can help
provided you can get to them soon enough. But you need to wonder why they
went dry in the first place.
The second issue is wear. Once a bearing wears to the point where a oil film
will no longer be maintained between the bushing and shaft there is nothing
you can do to help. You may be able to lubricate the bearing every few
months or so but it's just a matter of time before it has to be replaced,
usually by replacing the motor.
Thanks,
Tom Hargrave
256-656-1924
Our Web Sites:
www.kegkits.com
www.stir-plate.com
www.andyshotsauce.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM] On Behalf Of
Scott Daniel - Turbovans
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 1:34 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: heater fan whine
ok, I wrote about this not long ago.
my 85 Adventurewagon ..........in cold temps, on the lower speeds my front
fan would whine badly.
In my mind .........what we are hearing with that screech sound is rather
than the armature 'sliding' in the bronze bushings ....
it's skipping ...and any time you hear a squeak, like say in a dry house
hinge .....
that is the sound of the metal molecules actually sheering off.
So rather than sliding smoothly.....it's chattering and skipping, and
eating itself up on a microscopic level - not a good thing at all.
my 'first trick' is to run the van at high speed, and try to get WD-40
flowing into the air stream so it gets into the motor and bushings.
Spraying it in the front air intake opening .....barely gets the juice where
you want it though ....but it still has a tiny bit of affect.
my other trick.....I think bronze bushings are sell-lubricating.
What I found was my fan would screech at low speeds, but not at high speeds.
So....starting last fall, I would always turn the fan to high speed, where
it would not screech.
After a while, of running it mostly on high speed, then I could run it on
2nd speed without screeching.
A few months of that ...getting it used to running 'sans chatter and screech
' ....
it is fine now.
I still don't use 1st speed much , just 2nd and high, but it never screeches
these days.
in general, I avoid running heater fans on slow speed. Because
...........I've accidentally left one hour hours and hours that way before
..
also ....to me, the way metals and sliding things work.....often something
is smoother at a higher speed than a lower one - trying to think of a good
example or analogy.
In any case, this is how I fix a lot of things ....I find out where they
will work, and operate them in that mode, until they get healthy enough
again to operate in their other modes.
and engine is an example of something that works better at higher speeds
than at low speeds. If you push and engine hard at 1,200 rpm ....that's
really rough on it. You push it hard at 4,000 rpm.......it doesn't mind.
That's how I fixed my whiney front van. Sure seems to have worked. And wd-40
....
There are 'other and better' versions of that type of juice. But
overall..........I simply could not fix cars without that magic juice.
If I had to *only two* products to fix cars with. It would be Permatex High
Tack gasket sealer, and wd-40.
People freak sometimes when I say what I fix with wd-40, particularly
electrical things .......
but in about 4 million applications over 40 years or so, only once did a
really worn out switch get pushed over the edge by trying to lube it with
WD, it it just blew it out completely. All the rest of the time
........it's only helped, or not made a difference.
if you can find a mode where your fan motor is quite, operate it in that
mode. You hear that screeching, don't let it do that, it's the sound of
things tearing themselves up.
Sorry, it's just so much easier for me to fix things with 'psychic healing'
than it is to do a whole many hours project on the dash installing a new
heater fan motor. I get many 100's of thousands of miles out of my heater
fan motors. The one in my 1970 Mercedes is now 40 years old, still pretty
healthy - but I never allow it to screech either.
Scott
turbovans
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Keezer" <warmerwagen@YAHOO.COM>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2010 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: heater fan whine
C'mon guys, this is classic thread hijacking. The OP asked how to fix the
whine in the motor, not load reduction. I want to know the answer also.
Robert
1982 Westfalia
--- On Mon, 1/25/10, David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET> wrote:
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: heater fan whine
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Monday, January 25, 2010, 7:16 PM
At 05:58 PM 1/25/2010, John Rodgers wrote:
>This thread brings to mind having seen somewhere something about using a
>relay(relays) to reduce the load on the front heater control switch.
>
>Anyone have a link showing this???
Use the high-speed position on the switch to drive the 86 terminal on
a 20-amp relay; ground the 85 terminal. Use the 87 terminal to drive
the high-speed wire to the fan. On a 2.1l feed the 30 terminal from
the switch feed wire, but on a 1.9l run a separate fused circuit to
feed the 30 terminal.
The two lower-speed positions aren't overloaded so they don't need any help.
Yours,
D
