So last monday, my first day back to work, I start my drive in dreading all the issues I walk into when I enter work. But, ha! Instead, my Land Rover decides to get the jump start on the depression and just as my temperature coolant temperature is up, I turn the blower up and get ready to bask in warmth. Ahh the warmth and glorious noise of hot air rushing past me in the 15- 25F weather. Life is good!

For 20 seconds. Then the blower shuts off - right off. It never showed signs of being intermittent ever before. I figure well its cold, the motor in the blower is cold and any lube or oil in there is going to be thick - maybe it just blew a fuse due to amp draw since I cranked that bad boy to full blast vs gradual increase in speed. So I go to work shivering and cursing - I figure my lunch will be spent driving to advanced auto for some fuses.

Lunch comes - check the fuse and its good. Whatever - no time for this BS during the week it'll wait til the weekend. Friday evening I put the Land Rover into the garage.

I start ripping it apart - glovebox, under panel, its all out in no time. I look at the motor and it looks straight forward pulling the unit out - drop it out, and go to test it on the battery. Ready to have a slow or no moving blower I tap the terminals to the blower and WHOOOSH! ... oh. Hm.

So then I suspect the "power transistor" or "resistor" thing. Pop that out of the vent (cutting my hands up on the sharp sheet metal inside the glovebox area). I decide it can't be tested without opening it. Remove like 8 screws. Thing falls apart on the garage floor. Ugh. Put it back together after realizing its all soldered together and this isn't going to be pretty.

Then a guy spends a good amount of time on DiscoWeb (thanks for that!) describing a connector that gets loose and resistance increases and it melts/corrodes. He's done 20+ of them. Perfect! I take that off. Its fine. He insists its got to be soldered - fine, chop it off, breaking out soldering iron contort my body over the passenger seat under the glove box with no light and solder the connection. Nope.

So what is happening at this point is the connector to the blower reads +12v (11.8v-ish) when the blower is disconnected. If I slip probes in the connector while plugging the blower in, voltage drops to like 15 millivolts or even 0v at time. Awesome. So I systematically test each connection under the dash where the blower gets power. Two relays. A Couple modules. A few connections to make the harness easier to remove. Maybe 5 - 6 places total. Whenever the fan is plugged in, the voltage drops to 0v or so. At this point I had spent maybe 10 - 12 hrs across saturday and sunday working on this damned thing.

Finally, I said screw it - Georg Ohm is messing with me. Clearly, some place between the fuse panel and the blower connector has a shoddy connection that will pass voltage but has such high resistance that when there's load on it, it drops. Whatever. I smelled a kind of plasticy burny smell the week before it went bad a couple times but paid it no attention. There must be a connector under the dash some place that's crapped out. Typical Land Rover electrical engineering! So rather than rip apart the fuse panel and all, I just ran a 10 - 12 gauge fused wire from the battery through the firewall to the blower. Finally, that glorious glorious sound of rushing air through the vents. A little ghetto that I had to run a new 12v wire, but whatever. The ground is obviously fine since I didn't have to reground the whole circuit. The digital speed adjustment works, the ducting motors work. Whatever.

I primarily build older model BMWs with turbos and big horse powers - their electronics seem to be a lot more thought out. Land Rover, I love you, but I also hate you - I wish you were an E34.

Just a heads up in case people are trying to diagnose the same thing. If anyone knows where the +12v wire between the fuse panel and blower motor cracks or gets a dirty connection let me know and I'll un-ghetto my fan blower. For now, I am just happy to have heat again.

 

Sorry your rover gave you so many issues but at least you got it sorted out. You have a sweet E34, I've seen your posts on BF.c, I'm BMWJNKY over there. The BMW's do seem a little more sorted from the factory but the Rovers seem easier to work on.

 

Did you read the other thread on this same issue? Just read it tonight, jump over fuse #7 with a fused wire, worked perfectly. Same symptoms and everything, good power at the motor plug but wouldn't run when connected. Something happens to that fuse for some reason, strange. Give it a try, good luck.