Any - HJ advice regarding heater blower / resistors

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Mon 11 Jan 2016 08:10
Any - HJ advice regarding heater blower / resistors - Topdude

Have seen several questions answered by HJ about heater blower not working.

Usual symptoms, fan working on high speed only.

Advice given - Failed heater motor blower, possibly because of water ingress. DO NOT SIMPLY REPLACE THE HEATER RESISTOR OR YOU COULD CAUSE A VAUXHALL ZAFIRA TYPE FIRE.

Now i understand where this is coming from but this is a classic case of resistors burnt out. Have had this myself on a Honda Civic and replaced the broken resistor pack with no problems.

Also if the fan is running ok on high speed it is obviously working !

Anyone have a view on this ?

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Mon 11 Jan 2016 08:25
Any - HJ advice regarding heater blower / resistors - RT

The fan works on high speed as the circuit DOESN'T use any of the resistors - so it simply proves the fan works.

If a resistor burns out - why - has it been overloaded or is it badly/wrongly specified?

Care is obviously needed to rectify this issue properly to prevent Zafira-type incidents.

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Mon 11 Jan 2016 09:58
Any - HJ advice regarding heater blower / resistors - Wackyracer

I wonder how many of those cars that with heater resistor fires had actually had the pollen filter changed when it was supposed to be? blocked filter plus fan on a low speed is going to equal a very hot resistor pack.

I'm sure the tick box on the service sheet would indicate the filter was changed but, when I decided to check our Astra's filter it was filthy and had the same production date as the year the car was made. A bit more than a coincidence I think and fraud considering they kept charging for new filters that were never fitted.

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Mon 11 Jan 2016 10:56
Any - HJ advice regarding heater blower / resistors - madf

I changed the heater resistor on our 13 year old Yaris last year. The old one was corroded - I bought a secondhand one from ebay for £7-50 iirc.

No problems at all..

I concluded that as teh resistor was fitted in the inlet side of the air intake (for cooling), moisture in the atmosphere caused the corrosion., exacerbated by short journeys.

I changed the pollen filter which I had neglected - it was nearly blocked.

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