Page 1
|
So your Jensen Healey's probably not going to see a lot of winter driving, and you'll probably only ever use your
heater as a safety valve from keeping the engine from overheating. But, like the windshield wiper assembly, if you are
going to restore your vehicle, you might as well do all of it and do it right.
Fair warning before you start in on the assembly, there's a goodly number of soft parts within the heater assembly
that are no longer available (NLA). Luckily enough, they are all pretty easy pieces to fabricate.
|
Watch the video!
|
In the photo above you can see the complete heater assembly. While we'll note some items about the parts outside
of the Heater box & Blower motor, for the scope of this article the focus will be on the primary internals, and not
the connections to the outputs (e.g. the vents in the Dash).
From left to right you see the in dash vents, the demister vents, the heater tubing, vent tubing, blower motor and
heater box.
The first step in the process was to test out the blower motor. I took my homemade alligator test leads and hooked
up the blower motor to the battery in my drivable Jensen Healey. You can see from the photo below that the blower motor
works just fine.
Once you determine the status of the blower motor, it's time to get it on the bench for cleanup.
There is a small metal retaining circlip on the blower motor shaft. Pop/pry it off very carefully. You should then be able
to pull off the fan. Because of the age of the unit it may take some oomph to get it off.
Once the fan is removed you can put it in the dishwasher to clean it off. You'll be surprised how much of the gunk this
will remove. (Now some of you don't believe that I actually do this and that the better half lets me.... so here's
proof!)
Now that we have accounted for the plastic fan, it's time to turn our attention to the motor and the "squirrel cage."
The motor is connected to the cage with three flathead screws. The screws are somewhat soft so clean out the slot
as best you can (I zapped them with a small wire wheel on my dremel). There's a slight trick to removing the motor assembly
once the screws are removed. There are two half circle cutouts in the "squirrel cage." You need to rotate and wiggle
the motor out as the electrical wiring is on the "wrong side."
Now that we've got the two pieces apart, let's focus on the cage. There is a soft adhesive gasket on the cage. The one on
mine was in pretty sorry shape so I opted to remove it. The one warning is that this gasket is NLA.
Once the gasket is removed we can clean up the part so it's all nice and shiny. I used a combination of my dremel with
wire wheels and some soft steel wool.
Continued on Page 2