Fan in Heater Intermittent Fault - Again!

Dear All,

I've got a tintop 1982 GTI which is my daily driver.

In September of this year the fan/heater system started playing up. On any of the settings (1-3) the fan would just cut out, then start again, run for a few minutes, then cut out again, and so on.

No problem I thought, as I had a couple of spare heater boxes lying around, and a couple of switches.

First I checked all the fuses and connections, thinking it was probably a loose connection. This made no difference. I changed the fan speed switch, and this made no difference either.

I unplugged the feed to the heater and tried one of my spares; which blew a fuse (the fan had partially seized in this one - shpuld have checked!). I tried the second spare heater box, and it worked perfectly.

I pulled the dash out, got to the non-working heater box and replaced it with my spare one that I had already tested had worked. Put all the dash back in, and it still worked!

However, two/three months on and this heater box has developed the same fault as the old one! How can this be possible?!!?

Does anyone have any ideas and/or experience of this problem?

In this weather I drive around with the fan on the 3rd setting and heater on full to help demist: could this have caused any problems?

Please, please help, as I'm tearing my hair out here!  

Can't offern any help I'm afraid, but have had almost identical problem - cutting out more and more until no more/changed switch etc. Never got round to changing the blower itself (off the road the moment), but interested to hear of any fixes - no blower in the winter is no fun

Cheers

Having issues with mine in that it keeps blowing its fuse after 1 second. Checked wiring but no noticable shorts. Have got a new blower and resistor pack to fit this week. Should sort out the problem. Will let you know if it works or not.

Thanks for getting back to me.

I've sprayed WD40 in it to try and free it up a bit, and it's got slightly better (for now!) No idea what the actual problem is though…

markwon: only fix seems to be to try and try again. I was thinking about getting up-to-date components, and re-designing the heater box myself to try and gain some extra power and heat from the fan? I work in the industry so I can probably come up with an upgrade system. I'll have a think!

woza: as for blowing fuses, did you check that the fan spun freely? I had a spare bos that blew fuses for fun and I think it was down to a slight sticking of the fan itself.

I'll let you know how I get on!

Thanks again guys.

Fan was really stiff. Guess the bearings / bushes had gone. Replaced with new one from gsf (didn't fit properly - has to drill a hole in the plastic casing to allow the spindle to fit properly) and all is well now. Guess 25 years worth of spinning was enough for it. Fitted a new resistor pack too (which it turns out I didn't need to do - the old one was fine…) Oh well…