Aircon Blower Madness!

[Guest black-fingernail]

This is a strange and so far unresolved episode involving heater blower motors fitted to earlier Xantias. A purchase from eBay of a very doggy Xantia started a learning experience, lots of things have been fixed except for the aircon blower motor. The commutator completely wore out, so the motor needed replacing - no secondhand available. My mate the breaker says, "Have a look on the shelves, there`s one that came off a while back". Great! Slightly different wires, but they swap over. Double take. The `new` one fits the hole, has the same size fan - but rotates in the opposite direction! Well, it`s a centrifugal type blower, should work both ways eh? Not a bit of it! For some strange aerodynamic reason, the air just gets stirrred rrather than mmoved - it`s out of balance as well. What next? well, change the wires over, that makes it reverse, but hang on the brushes are offset so they will fail pretty nastily. I am now looking at dismantling a staked assembly to fit a spare armature to the correct brushholder, and am wondering whether to reverse the magnets.

A small voice has asked whether the left hand drive cars have the blowers on the right. Could it be that the French have created a mirror image? If so, then their heater blowers fit our aircon and vice versa... Ooh la la! Cross Channel Scrapyards!

P.S. Did you know that if the plug is pulled from the motor, the motor can be winkled out of its plastic case? It sits on three rubber pads, need lubricant for reassembly....

P.P.S Today bodged the thing by swapping over a set of brushes from the unidentified motor, nice easy job really, now it`s running on a see-through commutator - yes, really, odd plastic spots can be seen. As soon as I identify the brush part numbers I will offer a reconditioning service for these motors!