Anyone with basic diy skills and a resistance meter can mend this thing. There are 3 resistors on a printed circuit on one side of the module, and if you look at the side which is not white, you'll see 3 loops, the one in the centre is the one which is in the circuit in blower switch positions 1, 2 and 3. There is a layer of insulating material on top of the printed circuit loop. Use a piece of fine sandpaper to remove the insulating layer above the middle loop,starting with the straight centre section, until you come down to bright metal. Check the resistance between the loop and the rectangular input connections. When you find two spots on the loop which connect to two different inputs, (resistance somewhere between 0 and 20 ohms) then you just need to join these spots, either soldering a thin strand of copper like I did, or possibly by drilling two small holes and putting a strand of copper across, then using small poprivets, nuts and bolts, or selftapping screws to secure the copper. The main thing is not to have the ends sticking out too much, if you use a mechanical method the fastenings have to be as short as possible. You may want to put some laquer over it afterwards for insulation (I didn't because my repair was pretty flat). Since the middle loop is the one most used, it might be safer after the repair to ration use of position 3 on the blower switch, as this is the position where the loop carries the heaviest current, and where the loop got burnt out to start with.. In position 4 the resistor is completely bypassed and the blower is on full voltage. If you have the tools this is a 10-15 minute job - why pay £20 for a used resistor that may be just about to burn out, or £40 for a new one, when it obviously isn't up to the job anyway ? If properly designed they would go on for ever....
tom foxe, October 2007
