Restoration Wednesday, This BMW Blows

Quite literally now. I replaced the heater blower motor that froze up and installed everything yesterday. One day I have fantasies of driving an old classic with working heat and even possibly a/c. Dare to reach, dare to dream. Now while some of you may source an entire fan unit, which costs hundreds of dollars, and swap it in. I took a more complicated approach, took it apart and sourced the Bosch motor which cost three times less. Turns out that almost 50 years later the exact same motor is available for about $70 bucks.

Paul, didn’t you just cost yourself time is money by hee-haw donking with all the details to pull it apart and put it back together? A fair question. Answer, kinda. I did my usual gold cad plate everything. See that little tiny gold clip inside the screen? Those as it turns out you don’t want to lose. They hold the motor in place. Without them, you’re kinda screwed. I was able to retain them (I retained them because they are clips. I’m here every Wednesday, try the veal) despite a bucket full of parts going to and from the plater. Thought I lost one, so that sucked for a while.

All that aside, the hardest think to do was plug the wires into the motor. I sat on top of the fender with my feet on the engine for three Marvin Gaye tunes, a set of commercials and two follow up songs before finishing. Marvin Gaye would have been 81 about now if his father didn’t shoot him when 45 years old. They were celebrating him on the radio, Ann Arbor’s FM dial 107.1. I remember taking those wires off thinking why would engineers make them so short and then fish them through a screen to connect them? To have the screen up, try to pull the wires to the motor then connect them with enough slack to close the screen, eek. I tried several different ways before finally tucking them through the screen edge and relieving my body of contortion. Project properly sorted.