Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 11:41:52 -0400
Reply-To: "Joe L." <jliasse@TOAST.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "Joe L." <jliasse@TOAST.NET>
Subject: Re: front blower motor
In-Reply-To: <02a001bf0528$499c6440$10e1e1df@marshall>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
I did my 83.5 last year. If I could draw an anaology to the job it
would be sort of like loading a truck with cement blocks; nothing really
complex but nonetheless a big pain. Then again, paying for 4 hours of shop
labor is also a pain. Since both of these pains are in the area of the hip
pocket it is a question of which of the two objects in that area is best
able to stand the coming bite.
You have to remove the dash and to do that you have to drop the
stearing wheel. The wheel is attatched to the dash by two "shear bolts".
These bolts have heads shaped like a cone with no place to put a wrench but
are easily be removed with vice grips locked on to the narrow band you will
see at the base of the cone. You will likely chew them up a little doing
this but since you are not supposed to reuse these bolts anyway that is no
problem. If the bolts come out easy they will look perfectly reuseable and
you may be tempted to reuse them. Everything I have ever read on the subject
says DONT! I suppose it is like cotter pins, something that also are not
supposed to be reused but often are. You "probably" will get away with it
but then again you might not. Since it is the stearing we are talking about
here that "might not" looms large.
The worst part of the job is splitting that vent box once you get it
out. The thing is glued togeather and must be cut apart in order to get to
the blower motor. After you get in there you are 75% done. Pop in the new
motor and put it all back togeather. The directions will tell you to snap
the vent box back togeather with the clips that are on the box. The trouble
with this is that there are usually no clips and it there are the plastic
mounts for the clips are broken off. Just "gluing" the thing back togeather
seems to work fine though. For the glue use something like "GOOP" that you
will find in K-Mart, Wal-Mart and such places. This stuff makes a sort of
"rubber" bond that is strong enough but still easy to cut through if you
have to get in there again. Adgustments to the various cables are simple but
will probably take several tries to get them right.
As you reattatch the wires you may find a long grey one coming from the
motor that seemingly has no corresponding grey wire to attatch to on the
harness. This is a ground wire and goes to one of those copper "crown"
looking gizmos screwed to the van body that you will see in various places
when you get the dash off.
Total time for the job took about three hours as I recall. Everything
has been working fine for about a year now.
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf
Of Marshall Ruskin
Sent: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 2:29 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: front blower motor
My Procedure was as follows:
Go to shop.
Let them remove dash and steering wheel etc
Pay for 4.0 hours labour
It's a big job.
Marshall
>can anyone who has replace this in their vanagon comment on the procedure
for
>me? was it easy, difficult etc.... i have a 1986 transporter i have to do
>this to soon...
>
>thanks
>
>joe lucca
>
