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Heater Blowers

danr

danr

Messages
870
Ok so my heater blowers have packed up working. Ive had a search and it looks like it could be the resistor behind the ECU.

First question is where is the ECU located? Is it behind/ under the glovebox? Does anyone have any pics of how they've fixed the problem??? Is it as simple to unplug one and put a new one on?


Thanks in advance!
 
Its a common problem - Mine went in Oct last year.

You can fix it for free if you have a soldering iron and a small piece of wire (about 1/2 inch long).

Follow the advice in the link above and remove the resistor behind ECU (ECU needs to come out completely). Disconnect the battery before you do this though just to be safe.

You will end up with something that looks like this:

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If you remove the black casing, you will see the little PCB inside:

3..jpg

If you look closely you will be able to see two solder joints here:

4..jpg

All you need to do is solder the wire across these two points. I didn't need any additional solder as there was enough already there to make a good solder joint. Easy peasy.

Put it all back together, reconnect the battery and test the heater just to be sure. Mine has worked fine ever since. :D
 

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Is that safe to do Chris, I take it it just bypassed the resistor?

Personally i wouldn't be risking my car setting on fire for a £30 part....
 
lol, In a worst case scenario I'd say you probably would feel your face burning and turn off the heater before it really got hot enough to start melting anything. Its a common fix and I believe quite a few people have done this on the UK & US forums and I've never heard of any safety issues.

The heatsink absorbs the heat of the passing heated air in side the heater box. The heatsink is connected to a bi-metallic switch. It is this switch which opens the circuit when it gets hot - but the reason they fail is that they don't close again like theyre designed to. I wouldn't tut at anyone who would rather pay 30-odd quid for a new one, but all I would say is that it could well fail again in future.

Mine has been like this for 6 months and havent had any problems.
 
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