... I've got a good pre-81 blower assembly...

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John HAUL AWAY, OR CRUSHED CARS!!! HELP ME keep the cars out of the crusher! A/C Thread
"as I ride with my a/c on... I have fond memories of sweaty oily saturdays and spewing R12 into the air. THANKS for all you do!

My drivers:
1987 190D 2.5Turbo
1987 190D 2.5Turbo
1987 190D 2.5-5SPEED!!!

1987 300TD
1987 300TD
1994GMC 2500 6.5Turbo truck... I had to put the ladder somewhere!

I'm going to dig my blower back out and try to take it apart. If for any number of reasons that fails, then I will be in the market for a replacement motor! I'll post results after this weekend.

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Where there's a will there's a way
1978 300D

Update:
Took the motor out, again, and managed to pop the back end off by prying a screwdriver into the space and popping the sections out one at a time. I think it will go back together with a little persuasion.

So I have been able to check the brushes and see that though they are not all the way down, they are nearly so. There is maybe a mm of brush left on the short side before it would be metal rubbing on metal. My mystery deepens because it is not clear to me that this would cause the blowing fuses I've been dealing with. Would a brush being nearly gone be a cause of blowing fuses?

Now I face either replacing the brushes or the whole motor. I saw a post about a place that sells the brushes for about $30, which seems high to me. Would probably buy a whole new motor if I could be sure to match the specs.

If that doesn't solve the fuse problem then I'm back to head scratching. Funny thing is, it started blowing fuses all of a sudden, after years of no problems. In the meantime, the car is out of commission with no blower motor in service in the winter!

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Where there's a will there's a way
1978 300D

Ace Hardware has brushes for a few bucks. Buy one close to the right size and cut and sand it to the proper dimensions.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I have been having similar issues lately. I took mine out today and while there is some amount of brush left, the contact spring was pretty slack so I'll have to replace brushes eventually. However for the time being, a good blast with compressed air to blow out some nasty dust crud, a few drops of oil down and around the shaft and we now have heat blowing through the cabin again. For now. :-) Now to find some brushes up here in Vancouver BC.

So in my efforts to replace the brushes on my old unit, which was interesting, I managed to break off the brass tab that holds the spring in the casing. I did nothing more than open and close it a couple times to access the spring but that is all it took. In retrospect, I could probably have done all the accessing through the opening, but oh well. The commutator was really ground down and shot, and I figured I'd start new.

I found a new assembly on Ebay for about $150 and was fine with that. It came, and I've installed it, and it worked great and quietly, until the fuse blew again!

So now I know that the cause of my fuses blowing is not motor related. Looks like I really need to trace the wires in this circuit and figure out what is going on. I have all the manuals for the car, so can check there, but what a pain.

Assuming I can find and fix the short, I will be happy in having a new blower motor as part of the process.

__________________
Where there's a will there's a way
1978 300D