Can anyone help...my heater works fine if I turn the dial to level 4 but it seems that 1-3 levels do nothing. I would have expected them all to break if it was the fan, so is it likely the switch? or is it possible that the motor can break on just some speeds? any idea how much this might cost?
any help is much appreciated! Thanks, Mike
Call a parts store or dealer and ask if there is a blower resistor in the circuit...some use one to create the different voltages for fan speed, if not, it's a function of the switch...
If you've got a four-speed fan, you've got three resistor coils, usually mounted inside the air-box near the blower motor. In switch position 1, one or more of those coils is switched intp the circuit between the battery and the blower motor. In position 2, a different one (or combination of them) is switched in, and so on, until position 4, where none of them are switched in, and the blower is effectively connected directly to the battery. If it only works on 4, one or more of those resistor coils have burned out. Replace them (almost certainly as a unit), and you'll have multi-speed fan again. Your local *DECENT* parts place or a Mazda dealership will have them relatively cheap, but getting to them to replace them may be *VERY* non-trivial. I'm not certain about the Protege, but on my'82 626, they're an easy "3 screws and
5-minutes-or-less" swap - once you spend the hour and a half digging the airbox/blower motor assembly out from under the dashboard...Don Bruder wrote in news:450fe960$0$96182$ snipped-for-privacy@news.sonic.net:
It's that hard? I've replaced a few on Hondas and Toyotas and they were all right behind the glove box. Maybe ten minutes to remove the glove box.
Why would Mazda make it so hard?
Because they're not as good at it as Citroen, who know how to make it _really_ hard.
It's about a day to get the dash out on a Citroen XM, longer if you expect the heater cable controls to still work when you put them back afterwards.
It's the way all the pieces of the dashboard interlock, at least in the '82 626. The airbox/blower motor *IS* right behind the glovebox. But getting the glovebox out takes removing several large chunks of trim, and a portion of the dashboard underpinnings, and if it isn't done in precise order, you can't get the next piece that you need to remove to come loose 'cause it's either screwed through by a "higher level" piece that should have come out earlier, or there's no room to swing it past another "same level" piece to actually remove it.
It's quite the pain in the arse, as I found out when trying to strip my wrecked one, yet salvage as many pieces as possible.
Don Bruder wrote in news:45107f7f$0$96175$ snipped-for-privacy@news.sonic.net:
Ye Gods. Did Ford have anything to do with this, or is Mazda just...different? Don't remember my old '74 RX-4 being that tough.
There's a couple-four model years between '74 and '82, not to mention the difference between the 626 and the RX-4! :) the '78-'79 model-year boundary involved a near-total makeover of the 626 - almost nothing is compatible between a pre-'79 and '79 or newer 626. '79 -'82 they stayed almost unchanged, other than a few cosmetic bits (most visible being the disapperance of the "exhaust system overheat" light from the instrument panel for the '81 model year), and in '83, the new model was front-wheel drive, and almost totally incompatible with previous models.
But no, Ford hadn't gotten their fingers into the 626 by '82, at least, not to my knowledge. At that point, I'm pretty sure that the only connection Mazda had with Ford was a contract to build B2000s to be sold as Ford Courriers. That started in about '77 or '78, if I recall rightly. (I know for certain that a '78-'83 Courrier 2.0 liter engine is identical to the engine in my '82 626, except that the valve cover on the Courrier engine has the Ford logo molded/cast into it, while the valve cover on my 626 engine bears the Mazda logo - Otherwise, if there's anything incompatible between the two engines, I haven't encountered it yet in my boneyard scrounging, which I've done a *LOT* of) From '83 on, Ford DEFINITELY had their fingers in the 626 pie, but everybody pretended that Ford and Mazda were still independent operations.
Later on, I think it was '90, Mazda and Ford stopped pretending, and just plain crawled into bed with each other - I believe it was the '90-94 Probe - or maybe the Taurus - I'd have to hunt it up to be sure - but whichever one it was, for something like 4 model years, Mazda sold the Protege, which was nothing more or less than an "upscale" 626, and Ford sold the exact same car, but with different badging and option packages, as the Taurus/Probe/whichever it was.
Thanks to all who replied. I bought a new resistor, took off the glovebox (easy since there are no screws) and swapped out the old one. I only had to remove the 2 screws and take the connecting wires off which was one plug. Took me about 5 minutes and cost $37 cdn for the part. They wanted $60 to do this at the dealership, so a huge thanks to you all!
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