Hey everyone,

I took the time to investigate the front compartment blower fan resistor for leaves and debris. I have been procrastinating because I didn't think it would be a problem on "my" Fiero. I am so thankful I did thanks to other's who have posted their stories.
https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Archives/Archive-000002/HTML/20020511-1-013739.html

I should have taken digital pics but I think it has been done before. I removed the resistor and noticed a few leaves. I turned the fan on Med. and touched the resistor next to a leaf and it immediately burst into flames!! I also dropped it and it left a scorch mark on the spare tire. What GM genius decided to create this fire hazard?

Upon further inspection with my finger and flashlight, I pulled out a huge pile of dirt, leaves, hair, and a Wendy's straw wrapper from the 80's. I used a Shop-Vac and blower attachment, and screwdrivers to dig the stuff out. I had to take the fan off to get my arm in the tight space to remove the gunk. I think I removed about 2 measuring cups full of igniteable garbage.

I did this as I noticed my A/C accumulator was ice cold but the air was lukewarm. It now blows nice and cool too!!!

Thanks,
Sean
KCMO

I just did this a week ago, also pulling out a pretty good quantity of dried leaves. Even though here in Hawaii i NEVER use the heater, it better to be safe than sorry....

Kim

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It sits on the inside of the air duct for two reasons.
1 protected from damage and keep people and items from falling on it and (as you demonstrated) bursting into flames.
2 when the blower is on (low) air circulates over it keeping it cool.

Anything that may contact the resistor must first go through the fan (squral cage) and usualy chopped into smaller pieces able to fling past.

The resistor is used in the low and medium ranges of the fan only! low will make the resistor it's hottest. Without the resistor there would be only one speed... High

I've always thought this was a real idoit way to control fan speed. It's present on just about all automobiles up untill the mid-90s (when they started to get more advanced motor control on the vent system.)

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Ben Cannon
88 Formula, T-top, Metalic Red. (2:13.138 at Sears Point) "Every Man Dies, not every man really Lives"
88 Formula, Northstar, Silver, In-Progreess. -Mel Gibson, "Braveheart"

Well.....

To reduce the speed of a DC motor you are pretty much limited to either using resistance or a PWM control. (Pulse Width Modulation)

Untill recently resistance was the easiest way. It's used for dash dimmer, heater blower and rad fan speed control. It's cheap, reliable, and easy to wire.

Wether you use a transistor or a simple resistor, the heat has to go some place...

When you figure the millions (billions?) of cars using blower resistors... from Ford GM and nearly all others. It's really not a huge source of fires. there are plenty of other things that set allot more car fires than the heater controls. I'd bet allot more cars burn due to leaking oil/fuel and owner stupidity than the heater resistors.

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11-Sept-01, The day the world as we knew it ended.

Well I just wanted to give fair warning that this could potentially be a sure way to lose your precious car over a few dried leaves...I don't wan't this happening to anymore of our cars.

I looked at the design and thought that maybe a screen material could be wrapped around it to keep large pieces of leaves off the actual resistor coils...

This thread has been around a couple times before and I too went out and checked my car. There were leaves jammed in near the blower, and a couple caught up in the coils behind the electrical connector. Uor cars have lasted this long, let's not let some other fire fate befall them! besides, that stuff smells nasty after all these years...

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John DuRette
85 SE

I didn't mean you shouldn't check the thing or that it couldn't be improved... Just putting the issue in perspective....

You could screen it but it's not quite as easy as just adding screen... the screen can't touch the coils either. You can't use too fine a screen or the resistor will run hot.

Another option is to screen the air intake better. The easiest way I can thing of is to install a second screen right over the actual air intake under the trim.