A couple of you may know that I took my car dashboard apart recently in a quest to track down why my car blower fan stopped working. That last post was very technical, but this time around I'm going to keep it simple.
In the image above on the left you can see what I think the problem might be - the connector which runs the power from the 12V battery to the motor...
๐๐๐๐ฃ๐๐โ ๐๐๐๐ฃ๐๐โ Like the freaking wicked witch of the West!
In fact it was so badly melted that I couldn't actually unclip the two sides of the connector to take the blower motor out . I even tried levering it off with a flat screwdriver to no avail - I had to cut the thing out with a pair of wire cutters. Then tape them up individually so that I don't short out the car battery and shock the living shit out of myself in the process.
The pictures on the right are of the blower motor which I then disassembled (slightly) to inspect the insides. This is what I discovered when I opened it up...
The brown stuff you can see in these images is actually metal powder which has collected inside the motor from the brushes eroding over time as they moved along the central copper section.
The copper colour is gorgeous, it would make very sexy, shiny eye shadow, but can you imagine getting metal filings in your eyes? I had paused while thinking about this but decided it was a really fucking stupid idea and it went straight into the bin.
Apart from the metal filings which I cleaned out with a paint brush, I also pulled out a very dead moth, a leaf and a piece of plastic. I then oiled the bearings with penetrating lubricant (hell yeah!) to help the motor spin easily and I sanded the copper thingamabob to make sure that there is good contact between the brushes and said thingamabob when it spins.
In the next few days I'll purchase a new connector, wire it all up again, put in the gazillion screws and turn the switch. Let's see what happens.
๐ท๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐จ๐ฐ ๐๐๐๐. ๐จ๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ ๐๐ ๐๐๐.
