Heater blower controls

[Philpatton]

Tonight when driving, I noticed that the heater blower would only work on number 4. When I changed the fan speed to 1,2 or 3, nothing happened.
This happened before after a very wet downpour, just like this weekend, but after a while it started working again.
I'm going to pull the heater resistor tomorrow night, but is there anything else I should be looking at? I'm a little perplexed that this happened before, but then 'magically' fixed itself.
P

 

[t-tony]

Most likely the resistor Phil. Usually when that fails the fan only works a full speed (the resistor supplies the lower speeds) so maybe it could be water ingress or just a poor contact at the resistor.

Tony.

 

[Philpatton]

Thanks Tony. If the weather hadn't of been so rubbish this weekend, I'd have taken the heater resistor out, cleaned it and whizzed it back in. I'll give it a clean tomorrow and see where we go from there. It's not an expensive part, but I like to fix stuff, rather than simply replace.

 

[Philpatton]

I didn't get around to looking at the heater resistor as the weather was soo nice, I decided to go out for a drive instead! The weather for the rest of the week is forecast as being wet, so I grabbed the opportunity of a top-down drive and went for it. Car pulled like a train and was as stable as stable can be.
I was going to stop at Doncaster Airport, in a layby next to the runway to watch some planes take off and land, but my wife informs me that that is a local dogging hot spot.

 

[t-tony]

I would be concerned that she knew Phil.

Tony.

 

[Tom Martin]

All the more reason to stop Phil, but perhaps with the roof UP !

 

[Jjim]

Same problem in my Blue Z3 when I bought it. Only worked on settings 1 or 4.

Got one of these - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-3-Z3...675360?hash=item34083f7320:g:ZCIAAOSw1tRcrNR6

Have to take off the scuttle panel to get to it, but nice easy job.

 

[Philpatton]

We've moved Zed into the garage in preparation for our month away, and I took the opportunity to get into the heater resistor. I took the resistor out, tested it with a multimeter and everything was fine. I cleaned the contacts, put the resistor back in and all is working fine.
For anyone else who is thinking of doing this but worried about the complexity, rest assured that it is a straightforward thing to do. The most difficult thing to do was removing the wiper arms.
P

 

[bonbon]

Same problem in my Blue Z3 when I bought it. Only worked on settings 1 or 4.

Got one of these - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BMW-3-Z3...675360?hash=item34083f7320:g:ZCIAAOSw1tRcrNR6

Have to take off the scuttle panel to get to it, but nice easy job.

You don't really need to buy a replacement part. All you need to do is solder the defective rivet (which is clearly visible upon inspection). Obviously they had the wrong setting on the riveting machine...