M. Requin

Absolutely! But also take a good look to see if it is just filled with crud. If so, the crud could conceal a perfectly good bolt, and make even a SnapOn tool slip and bugger it up.

Christopher Zach

Finally got time yesterday to work on it. Yep, bolts just had crud, so pulled every bolt, cleaned with brake cleaner, cleaned out the hub with brake cleaner to clear the threads, pushed each bolt through the washer/CV joint, cleaned every bolt head sticking out again with towels soaked with cleaner, pulled the wheel, hooked up a lot of extensions, and torqued them down. Not especially hard, and I used the jack handle on the bolts to keep things from turning, worked fine.

Car is together and running well, no clicks or clunks in turns. I'll keep an eye out as the temps drop, but looks to be ok at this point. Thanks everyone for the help, just something to be checked on an occasional basis.

SwayBar

What does that mean, did you use a torque wrench and torqued the bolts to 62 ft lbs, or not?

AO

Hey Swaybar,
I know you know how to read good. So I would recommend that you re-read his statements. I think you believe "hard" relates to torque, but I believe he means the job itself was not "hard." They are separate sentences.

SwayBar

Doh!

Thanks Andrew...

Christopher Zach

You know, it's quite possible I might have torqued one of the bolts to 61, just to see what happened....

So far no problems. Checked them before making a 6 hour drive, none were loose.

Oddly enough the car is running pretty much flawlessly. Mild annoyance in that the blower sometimes comes on full power for about 30 seconds even at speeds 1-3, but I haven't had the time to try and figure that one out yet. That and the cruise control are my only issues, and I'll work on the CC in the spring. Motor is flawless with the new spark plug computers.

Mrmerlin

the blower coming on is the result of the motor shaft bronze bushings getting sticky ,
this results in the shaft being harder to turn,
this makes the load the motor uses more,
that makes the resistor pack run more current and it eventually overheats,
resulting in the safety circuit being enabled to run the fan at hi speed to cool the resistor pack.

clean the blower out with electrical cleaner then blow dry with compressed air.
then use fine machine oil on the shaft bearings.
The next step is fitting as new blower motor Roger sells one.

CC computer can be fixed Roger sells repaired CC modules

SteveG

I read what you said: I saw . . . "he believed . . . . she believed . . ." As in "he said, she said" Later they = divorce lawyer.

Wisconsin Joe

Classic "magic blower" syndrome. Search that for more info.

Short version:

There is a resistor pack in the HVAC ducting in the cowl. The pack offers various levels of resistance based on fan setting. It has a 'safety circuit' built in so that if it gets too hot, it goes to zero resistance and full speed fan. More airflow cools it off (and no resistance generates no heat), so the pack cools off and goes back to the set speed.

It could be the motor drawing excess current, as MrMerlin suggested, it could be that the pack and HVAC duct are full of dust, lint, leave 'crumbs' and various other crud.

That was my case. Pulled out the pack and cleaned all the crud off of it. Cleaned all the crud off the front of the heat exchanger in there (A/C evaporator?). The airflow increase inside the car was significant. And the airflow across the resistor pack increased to the point that I only get magic blower if the fan is set on zero (which is actually low speed) and I'm sitting still for more than a couple minutes.

michael j wright

Read this thread out of curiosity, but found a fix for something else that I have been wondering about! Great place to learn, Thank's again Stan