Yesterday, I was doing some work on the recently aquired 1977 244. I was replacing some dash lights that were out, and I noticed that the Heater fan resistor pack was placed outside of the heater fan housing... I found this to be odd. I have replaced a Heater Fan in my '80 245, and when I did that, I placed the resistor pack inside the housing.

I can tell that the heater fan has been replaced in the car at least once before, it has a newer switch type, and a newer resistor pack, but it's still a 3 speed motor.

Here's the problem. I don't know why, but when I put the console back together, the fan was just dead... I have no idea why. It had been working just fine, although it had been making a kind of quiet whirling noice for the last few days though...

Since the resistor pack is on the outside of the casing, is there an easy way to test it, like, some way to by-pass the resistor to test the motor?

It's not the fuse, I checked that. If have to do the heater fan on this thing, I'll do it, but I really don't want to go through that again.

Any ideas?

I must admit to trying that with some of the many heater fans I've replaced.
Not a good idea because the resistor is cooled by the cold center section
of the heater core. The center of the heater core is the cold side return
so they can cool the heater fan speed resistor that way. Since your's are
mounted outside they get too hot and can become brittle (they do anyway
with age)and the resister opens and it won't conduct anymore. I suspect that
you handling it could make that happen. Also the heater fan gets ground on
one of the screws for the center support. Maybe that has been left off. Wish
you well.

Dave 82 242ti

You bring up a good point about checking the ground... I foolishly didn't do that. I'll go check that now.

By the way, does anyone know where to look for a 3 speed resistor pack? If not, would a four speed resistor pack work on the 3 speed motor? (I would imagine so, so long as I replaced the switch as well...

Thanks for the responce!

if you jump any resistor, you just put the motor to full speed (i.e. min resistance), that is the easiest way to if the resistor is dead.

Greg