It's been a while since I've written something on
my homepage, there has been no major failures,
but, there has been several improvements on the table..... I've been busy with
the Land Rover ;-)
With the on set of winter, one of the things
that was concerning, is that the fan has no power! Damn, even
on high, it don't move many molecules of air. So, it was time for a transplant.
I've read on many Land Rover
forums over the years, of guys using GMC fan motors in place of the standard Land
Rover unit. So, I had to
give it a go.
The heater unit that I found in my local wrecker is from a Pontiac Transport. A 3 speed blower motor.
Obviously, the Pontiac
blower motor wouldn't fit the Land Rover blower housing, so some trimming was
needed. First, the "cage" which sucks in the air and blows it into the cab, it
was too big, but I was
able to transplant the Land Rover original cage onto the Pontiac blower motor.
Then the blower motor
body plate was too large to fit the blower housing. It was a simple case of
going with the angle grinder to
remove the excess metal. I also matched up the 3 securing screw holes, so
that I could use the original
screws.
On the blower body, I had to
install the resister for the 3 speed Pontiac blower motor. The Land Rover
blower body is rather small, so the resister was placed in the output hole area.
Locking back at the
Pontiac blower body, the resister was placed there also, I wonder if it requires
cooling from air
circulation? Once that was in place, I sealed it well with silicone. At
the same time, I decided to seal the
entire blower body middle seal, which is known to allow air to flow right
through!
In order to mount the Pontiac blower motor with
the Land Rover cage, I had to create a shim using
7mm plate, so that the cage didn't come in contact with the blower body. It was
simply too long, but
the shim gave the necessary spacing.
Once I had everything ready, this is how it looked before final assembly. -->
Before installation, I gave
all the seams a healthy dose of silicone. I know, it's white silicone, but I
ran out of black! I was too lazy to stop what I was doing and run to the store
and buy more, knowing I
hade some white in the garage. ;-)
Next was the wiring. The
Pontiac blower motor is a 3 speed, but Land Rover doesn't have a 4 position
switch, so I decided not to use the slowest speed. So the blower is wired up to
run on the medium speed
and fast. Even on the medium speed, the blower blows faster than the original
blower ever did! On high,
you have to hold on to your hat ;-))
Also, when I wired the blower motor, I decided to use a few
inline 15Amp fuses, on the power supply
wires. ( Electrical safety is paramount )
Winter has come and pass, I
can report that the blower motor worked a treat! Cleared the windows
extremely fast and actually provided some continuous heat in the landy.
Another thing that I like,
is that the conversion doesn't look out of place. Only a trained eye would
notice the difference. Also, if need be, I could install the original Land Rover
blower motor within minutes.
I've been thinking that
maybe I'll wire in a relay this summer, see if that will help to boost the speed
even more. Actually, you know when the motor is at idle, the fan does spin
slower, till you give it some
juice. So, I'm thinking a relay in the system would help.
