Blower motor- speeds lost. Resister pack fix.

[SoORYotas]

M -

We all help each other, right. In the van the r-pack is located on the lower left corner of the blower motor assembly. Reference the post by fillupamerica 12/9/2013 in this thread and the pic showing the blower motor assembly. See the little black plastic thing behind the relay fuse tray marked with 263 - that is the r-pac. For the Previa (if I remember the posts correctly) you lift the hood and look at the heater blower motor case assembly on the right side of the firewall. Both of these use a 4 wire plug assembly but have different shapes -pentangle on the original van and square on the Previa. You have to hack the blower motor case a little to use the Previa r-pack.
Cheers!

SoORYotas

[JDM VANMAN]

Thanks for the heads up, I’m here now and someone already took it. I’ll post a picture later today. Off to the previa!!

thank you

JDM

[JDM VANMAN]

I think this is where it’s located, but already gone. The Previas in the yard already had them pulled as well.

Resistor pack location?







JDM

[meetim]

I have two vans ('86, '87) on both of which the low speed fan resistor is blown.
Has anyone measured the Ohm-age of the resistors such that they could be duplicated one way or the other?
Lets call them small (low), Medium (M1), Large (M2)
I have measured Medium & Large at around 1.1 and 0.8 Ohms, respectively.
does anyone have the ohm-age of the small resistor?
Thanks

[MarkH]

I found that the resistance is pretty standard across many models of old Toyotas (Camry, pickups, etc.) The resistance values for them are: 0.4, 0.8, 1.5 Ohms. I've used these values for rebuilding the resistors on my old Tercels and my Van and they seem to work fine. I have no idea if the fan speeds are slightly off, but they seem close enough to me. When measuring the resistance with many meters, be sure to minus the internal resistance of the meter itself. I touch the 2 leads of the meter together and see what it reads then minus that from my measurements. I used Nichrome wire as the resistors. I measured the length using my meter to have it at the proper resistance. I wound the lengths around a pen to make them into coils. Here's a link to my post on the 4wd Tercel forum:https://tercel4wd.com/forums/viewtop...esistor#p89265 I don't know if the photos will work if you're not a member.

[timsrv]

That's an awesome post on the Tercel site, thank you Mark. Unfortunately though the pics won't display for non-members, so that's a bummer. Any chance you can post them here?

PS: It's funny how the same people who like vans also like the Tercels. I've had a few Tercels, but don't currently have one. They are awesome little cars. Tim

[MarkH]

Here are the screen-grabs from that site with the photos:




Here is also more cut-and-paste from that post:
I didn't use any new solder to hold the coils in place. I agree that the high temps in the coils would probably melt regular electronics solder. The holes in the flat metal tabs are pretty small and semi-clogged with old solder so I had to force the ends of the coil wires in them. They are now held in there pretty tight (especially since I bent the ends of the wires after shoving them in the holes). Some of the original melted solder probably re-solidified around the wires in the holes as well so I'm not worried about the wires coming out.
I've heard that it's very difficult to solder ni-chrome wire anyway. During this job I tried to "silver" the ends of the wires by dipping them in flux paste and then burning it off with the tip of the iron with a drop of regular melted solder. Usually this bonds a thin coating of solder to the wire and makes it easier to stick when soldering it to something. This time, the solder refused to stick to the wires. I've never seen that before. It always works great with copper wire.

[meetim]

Short story: success! Use 1.5 or 1.8 Ohms 5W ceramic resistors.
Long story:
Given that my measured resistances for M1 and M2 differed from those provided for the Tercel, I wondered how different my low speed resistance would be.
Turns out, not different at all, or at least, 1.5 ohms seems fine.
I bought a selection of 5W and 10W ceramic resistors from the local electronics store (Jaycar) with the intention of joining them in series and parallel as required, as previous posts seemed to indicate we need to dissipate up to 20W.
I started out with the 1.5 and 1.8 ohm 5W resistors by themselves and they worked fine.
In still air (not in the fan duct), they didnt smoke or melt the solder, they didnt even get 'no-touchie' hot.
So I predict they will be just fine in situ.
Out of interest I measured the output air speed for both resistors. it tended to flicker in a range of 0.3 km/h
1.5 ohm: 6.8 - 7.1 km/h
1.8 ohm: 6.2-6.5 km/h
in case anyone wonders, the air speeds for the other settings were 13, 17 & 19 km/h.

[MarkH]

Nice! I wish I could have gone that route of using pre-made ceramic resistors. I can't remember the calculations, but I assumed it would require a pretty high wattage rating which would make the resistors too big to easily fit. On mine, I could see the old resistor wire glowing red. Maybe the replacement larger gauge wire with a greater length would provide the same resistance with not as much heat. I'll remember your success if I ever have to do this again. Plus, the ceramic resistors allow for easy soldering.