164 stepper motor post mortem

[Richard Welty <rwelty@domain.elided>]

now that i'm more-or-less finished with this job, some followup (and
there's a question for those who have gone before me down there):

the alfa pro instructions are very good, but it's possible to miss some
things.

my 1991 base model has a 10mm nut down under the driver's side, matching
the one behind the floor light on the passenger's side. the alfa pro
instructions mention this, but as most likely on "early RHD cars".

when reinstalling the dash, you need to be just as careful about the
defroster surrounds as when you pulled it out. i got to be in too big a
hurry here. oops.

the spring clip that holds the tube for one of the defrosters on the
passenger side is easy to lose. my car now features a cable tie holding the
tube in place. oops.

a utility knife with a thin blade served to pop open the small end of the
stepper gear case. i didn't have a screwdriver with a thin enough blade to
do this, but the thin knife blade was quick and easy.

the defroster vents and the two large philips screws in the center still
won't line up. i'm driving it without the fascia over the defrosters for
the present time, until i can work the dash into place. anyone have any
suggestions?

on my way to the steppers, i determined that probably they'd been replaced
before. when i got to them, the gears weren't stripped, which on a 125K
mile car means that certainly they'd been replaced before. on further
examination, i determined that my heater dysfunction was because of the
broken shaft on the drum. epoxy and the reinforcing ring took care of that.
the heat distribution works just fine now.

a final observation: this job is almost entirely labor. anyone who is going
to do this much work should buy the complete alfa pro kit, and do
everything while they're in there. anything less is pennywise and pound
foolish. even though the plastic gears were not stripped, i replaced them
with the metal ones. it was just too damn much work to get in there to even
think of doing anything less.

(this is the same reason i always preemptively replace V6 water pumps
whenever i do a timing belt. it's just too damn much work for me to want to
economize that way.)

richard
--
Richard Welty                                         rwelty@domain.elided
Averill Park Networking                                         518-573-7592
              Unix, Linux, IP Network Engineering, Security
--
to be removed from alfa, see /bin/digest-subs.cgi
or email "unsubscribe alfa" to majordomo@domain.elided