Mistral Fan stops and fan speed controller

[Fishing Luke]

My beloved '95 mistral has had a faulty fan motor, a noisy fan and the speed controller only working on flat out (3).

Fan works some times. Almost certainly the brushes. Sent my old brush plate to Independent Carbon Brush350A Heads Road, Castlecliff, Wanganui, Manawatu-Wanganui, and a few days later got it back with new brushes. No further problems with the fan not starting or needing to be whacked to get it moving. (remove 3 eight mm bolts and the connector to remove)

Fan sounds like the bearings are failing and the perhaps like a stick or something is rubbing against it inside. Turned out the motor housing has been rusting for ever and dropped rust between magnets and rotor. A bit of a challenge to get all the rust out, but now works sweetly.

Turns out this rust caused enough friction to burn out the speed control resistors, and that's why it would only work on high, and made a hell of a racket doing it. Never fear, as mentioned above, you find these resistors situated in air duct just after fan and before the airco condenser Behind glove box on my misty '95. Unplug the connector (6 way on mine) and remove 2 big screws to release caged resister box. Use the vacuum to clean out the junk you'll find behind it.

The cage can be removed using pliers on 2 of the tangs, and unsoldering metal strips off the other 2.
Take care to remember which way everything goes back together. Gently prize the cage off. Inside you'll find 3 resistive wire coils in series. In my case these were in working order. To avoid a dash fire, a pair of contacts are soldered together, and spring apart if they get too hot. If you find this, solder the pair of contacts back together , plug the resistor unit back into the harness, and you can check if it's sorted.

Re-assemble everything before you let the missus or the kids in!

[kiwipete]

I cleaned mine out the other week and was surprised at how much debris was in that compartment after the resistor pack was out; a length of flexi hose on the end of the vacuum cleaner soon had that sorted.