Hello,
I have disassembled, cleaned, checked and greased the heater unit which came with my '54 6 Volt 3100. The current draw of the motor has dropped from erratical 8- 10 amps with poor and noisy performance to about 5 amps. It runs now quite and steady and produces a steady and strong air flow.
I read here that some had difficuties with the springs and brushes in the motor. I fixed the springs with small crocodile clamps all the way into the brush guides, placed the (old and worn, replacements ordered) brushes in as far back as possible until the armature was in position. Then I retracted the clamps and fixed the spring positions (tilted ends) with a piece of thin steel wire. That went well and I found it pretty easy.
Since the heater unit was only mounted in position but wasn't hooked up, neither electrical nor to the cooling system, I have to figure out how to do this. I don't have any problems with the water side, but the electrical side gives me a bit of a headache (although I once was a proper trained non-car related electrician). The oldcarmanualprojects page does not working at the moment so I don't have access to any accessories related literature and a forum search didn't bring up all answers needed.
So I start out with some questions:
I read those 5 amps on the indicator of my battery charger while testing the motor. This number seems pretty reasonable to me, but is it really ok?
There is a off-low-high switch with a resistor coil on a ceramic tube mounted to the car, but also not hooked up. The ceramic tube won't stay inside the resistor. That seems to be a mechanical problem, but I don't have the least of a clue how to adress this. Can you please give me any suggestions?
"Use a fuse and wire accordingly" is a no brainer on electrical accessories and based on the numbers I gathered while checking with the battery charger I would select a fuse of 10 amps, which will blow eventually on a blocked up motor as well as on a short but won't blow if motor condition decreases a bit. Is this good, or am I way off from the original or experienced numbers (to high/low)?
And the last question: I would like to have the switch hooked up to the ignition switch, so that the heater fan is turned off with the cars engine. Can I simply put this high current to the ignition switch or do I have to use a relay? I don't like the idea of neither a dead battery due to forgetting switching off the heater fan, nor frying the ignition switch with to high current...
Thanks in advance for any hints, suggestions or instructions.
