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96 Heat has smell

M

maybe2fast

NAXJA Forum User
Location
COMMERCE, MI
okay after about 15min of running the blower, there arrives a smell...its like a hot/melting plastic. It might be an electrical smell. I am wondering if it could be the motor? but the thing is it works great and does not make any noise!?

fan wheel smells?
blower burning out?
resistor burning?
:wierd:
 
could be any one of the ones you listed. take apart the lower dash to gain access and troubleshoot from there.

last thing that made that smell on my 89 was the headlight switch and before i got a chance to find the problem, i lost my headlights and had to rebuild the connector to the switch
 
You do want to find out what it is. Look at your fuses carefully. I had a cheap fuse melt wrong and not break contact, which caused later wiring harness damage. I've seen bad blower motors cause wire harness meltdowns and start fires under the dash. You could feel underneath the dash for hot wires??????? Check the ones from the blower moter to the resistor and from the resistor to the switch. There are threads about adding relays to the blower motor circuit due to switch overload, but that seems like overkill. Main cause would be blower moter drawing too much current (old age).
 
Check the plug on the back of the fan switch. I've seen a few that have melted. JIM.
 
x2 on that, mine was smelling for years when on high speed....the plug and the switch itself had shown signs of melting.

Finally last year it started to smoke. I replaced the switch with a good junkyard switch and got rid of the plug and used female crimp on terminals.

No more melting, no more smell.

You can do a modification using relays because as it comes from the factory, all of the current for the fan passes through that switch.
 
maybe2fast said:
burning rubber smell outside.
burning electrical..ish smell inside
Click to expand...

maybe2fast, did you ever remedy your problem? Was it the blower fan or the fan switch or both?

I am experiencing this same issue on my 2000 XJ now. No problem with everything off but with the blower fan on high it will run about 5 minutes before it starts smelling like burning plastic/rubber. The smell comes quicker on lower blowers speeds. After about 30 seconds after smelling the burning plastic smoke starts coming out of the vents. I am running with the system off no problem, but it is strating to get cold around here and I will want to use my heat in the mornings soon.

Anyone have a link to a thread for adding relays into this circuit
 
Good PM is to clean up the plugs with electrical contact cleaner and possibly tighten up the female connections by lightly squeezing the connector. This helps prevent them from starting to generate heat and melt things.
 
It is difficult to squeeze the connector as it is hard plastic.

I eliminated the large plastic plug on my 95 and just used crimp on female spade terminals. Sure you have to make sure you have the right wires going to the right position on the switch so you have the speeds in the correct orientation from slowest to fastest but that's not really a problem, after all how many times do you have to take the HVAC control panel out?

I pulled out a dial switch from the HVAC control panel of some Chevrolet van with the custom wood interior, thought about trying to adapt it to my XJ's HVAC control panel, but haven't done so in a year and a half since I got that different switch. Haven't had a problem after switching to the spade terminals.
 
Blaine B. said:
It is difficult to squeeze the connector as it is hard plastic.
Click to expand...

Sorry, meant to say squeeze the little metal parts within the plastic connector. (Not sure what you call them, the oposite of blade). Admitedly, this is not easy either. Ditching the big plug and going with individual connecting wires works good too, like you say, because the multiple connections aren't fighting each other.
 
I find it easier to use a dental explorer to push down the metal tabs for each terminal a little bit while it is unplugged from the switch. Then you can still use the craptastic plug.
 
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