The weekend came and went all too quickly. I was able to ascertain that the
Fanzilla assembly is trash. As you can see from the previous post, the unit has overheated and partially melted on one side. I traded messages with an electrical engineer on the
dmctalk.org forum who told me these units draw up to 3 ma continuously (when the car is not running). He sells replacement solid-state modules that use a time-delayed trigger to kick on the fans in a sequence depending on the inputs (AC compressor, Otterstat & ignition). They also get rid of the old circuit-breaker. This seems to be the solution and I received the pricing information for both the fan-relay module and fan-fail relay module. The fan fail portion of the circuit allows for the original indicator light (near the bottom of the AC controls panel) to work with the new solid-state equipment. All in (not including shipping) I'm looking at around $150 for the parts. I'll probably wait for a few months before I pull the trigger on this. In the meantime, I've determined a way to use a 40A or higher relay with a switch and a fuse to run the fans manually. I'm also going to include a second relay to indicate if the fuse blows and illuminate the fan fail indicator light.
In addition to the fan relay testing, I crawled up under the front end of the car and tested one of the fans (the other one had a hack-wiring tape job). The one I tested using the factory plug worked fine. I didn't notice any bearing or other audible issue. I'll fix the hack wiring sometime this week with proper solder and heat-shrink.
I was hoping to get all this knocked out yesterday but I was too busy with other obligations. So these tasks have moved to my weeknight list for this week.
Also found this unplugged and coming from the speedo box. I found the other end and assume this is part of the Lambda system on the car (Service reminder system from DMC). I'll probably leave it unplugged for now, as I assume there's a reason it was unplugged in the first place.
