113: Thursday 4th February 2010

I booked a day off work to help my wife with her delivery job (she hasn't been well recently). Finished about 2pm, so back to the heater. I found the wire for the relay controls of the heater and figured out how to get the fan running with a simple link. I connected the 12v battery and checked the relay was working, and it was. Connected the heater to the 120v from through the relay and hooked up the 120v supply. I went inside the car, linked in the fan motor and then the heater. I had a nice blast of hot air, yippee (finally). Only problem was the auto relay was not robust enough to pass the power of the heater and it's contacts got welded together, so the heater won't switch off. Good job I fitted an Anderson connector, so I pulled that and cut the heater. As the relay was inside the control box, I thought about using a higher current relay. I made up the external circuit and borrowed the connections from the control box to bring the relay on. Tested the 12v circuit on it's own, fine. Connected the 120v supply and the same thing happened. Next I disconnected the 120v from the heater and removed this relay. I have now ordered a 12v Allbright contactor hopefully this will be able to run the heater and not weld the contacts together. It got too cold to work on it so I packed up early. Next job to refitted the interior. Fortunately all the control and power circuits are under the hood, so I can put the car back together and fit the new contactor when it arrives and that should then be finished.