164S Heater Working Great In 100F+ Heat

["Rich Lasner" <rlasner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This past Monday, the rhythmic clicking of the plastic gear in my stepper
motor being worn off turned to an insistent grinding noise. The next day,
all my vents started blowing very hot air, no matter what the temp. was set
at.  Seems the motor controlling the drum that selects AC/heat finally quit.
I can happily direct the scalding air to any vent I choose, so one set of
gears is still with us.

After watching the Stepper Motor Replacement Video several times in mock
horror (how unhappy does the technician look to you?), I phoned Doug Hodson
in England on a tip from the Digest to order a set of alloy gears for the
stepper motors. Not only was Doug very encouraging on the phone, he insists
the motors can be removed without ripping the whole dash out. The only
caveat Doug applied is that he works on RHD 164s, and the LHD cars may be
different. Maybe it wasn't apparent when the 164 was first designed, but
once the stepper motor problem surfaced, it might have been nice to redesign
the dash so that the center section was removable, or access to the motors
made possible through the side of the glovebox. I'll do the install when the
new gears arrive and post the results on the Digest.

On a totally unrelated 164 topic: The bulbs in the passenger side sun visor
vanity mirror both fell out of their mounts and the two metal contact strips
touched, blowing a fuse. I had to rip the vinyl off the visor to see how the
system worked (Does anyone know how to disassemble the visor without
destroying it?). The two fuse-style bulbs push at opposite ends of two
parallel brass contact strips, forming a spring. These contact strips sit in
brittle plastic slots that sheared off, dropping the bulbs and causing the
short that blew the fuse.

Rich Lasner
Mill Valley CA
92 164S

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