Another Heater Question

[DieselSpider]

Poly-urea grease is whats generally used in electric motors so using lithium can lead to a bad reaction with the oil separating from the lithium and corrupting the armature. You have to ensure that all traces of the old grease are removed to prevent a reaction. Cleanliness is required to ensure there are no compatibility issues.

One also needs to keep this in mind when changing ones grease guns cartridge as you can corrupt the gun by switching grease type to an incompatible formulation so that everything you use that gun on afterwards will suffer from grease breakdown and failure unless you pristinely clean it when changing grease types.

I learned something new.... I hadn't heard the term polyurea grease. I had to do some internet study.

Anyway, I used what I had at hand. Lithium grease from Napa. The fan works good. Thats all I know

If you did a good job cleaning out the old grease first you should be OK. Sometimes you see the oil weeping out of the grease on many parts of cars and even grease guns from this very common mistake. So just raising awareness so folks can better understand what they are looking at if the new grease they put on/in (really anything) starts weeping out the oil.

[RRoller123]

Really interesting post! Man this is way more complex than I had imagined. This is from the National Lubricating Grease Institute, written by David Turner of Shell.

http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Rea ... patibility

[DieselSpider]

Really interesting post! Man this is way more complex than I had imagined. This is from the National Lubricating Grease Institute, written by David Turner of Shell.

http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Rea ... patibility

Yes, what you don't know can hurt you. You can really shoot yourself in the foot on this one.

[RRoller123]

I assume that everything that we would buy at an auto parts store that is "axle or wheel bearing grease" would be compatible, but it is time to read the labels.

[baltobernie]

Another question. If I wanted to bench test the fan, which wire goes where? There is a blue, red and black. I have tried every combination (I think) and it worked once, but I forgot what I did.

Red + 12v = Low
Blue + 12v = High
Black is ground
masking tape + Sharpie = priceless

[davery]

Another question. If I wanted to bench test the fan, which wire goes where? There is a blue, red and black. I have tried every combination (I think) and it worked once, but I forgot what I did.

Red + 12v = Low
Blue + 12v = High
Black is ground
masking tape + Sharpie = priceless

That's what I thought. I did that a few times and could get it work. I came back a couple of minutes later and tried again and it worked. But then an hour later it didn't work again.

[davery]

So I'm looking at trying to unfreeze the heater valve control. How can I tell if the cable or valve is bad?

[lglade]

Odds are that it's the valve--cables that are entirely inside the passenger compartment will rarely go bad. But if you disconnect the cable from the valve, you can try the control lever and see if it suddenly works. At the same time you can try to operate the valve manually. You'll know in less than a minute which one is non-operational.

[davery]

Odds are that it's the valve--cables that are entirely inside the passenger compartment will rarely go bad. But if you disconnect the cable from the valve, you can try the control lever and see if it suddenly works. At the same time you can try to operate the valve manually. You'll know in less than a minute which one is non-operational.

I finally got the valve to work. Now just need to replace the fan.