How about a small access hole on each side of the housing
where the bearings are located so you could periodically
shoot some WD40 in there to clean the bearings.  I found
WD40 to work nicely on the rear heater blower motor, that
the problem of it overloading and squealing was simply due
to dirty bearings.  A few well aimed sprays has made that
blower work like new for three years now.

Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List
[mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com]On Behalf
Of Timothy Lee Harrison
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 3:58 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: A radical idea

On Monday 10 Dec 2001 4:57 pm, John Baker wrote:

> possible to get to the blower motor from above? Putting
all aesthetics

'Fraid not. The heater blower is encased in a plastic
housing that's
sealed by (plastic) welds. It's easier to get the whole
casing from a
wreck and replace that, rather than take it to bits and then
have to clamp
it back together again, although I'd certainly attempt that
if I had to!

> out of mind (I can hide the panel with a creative dash
covering), what
> do you guys think about this hare-brained scheme?

Nothing wrong with cutting an access hole, but I doubt that
it would be of
much use for most things. If the wiper motor blows, it won't
be
sufficiently large to , same goes for most other
slightly-more-than-trivial things behind there, I think!

Once you've taken the dash out, it's much easier next time.
You'll know
what to look out for, for one thing. Additionally, you can
replace the
torsion bolts on the steering column with normal bolts which
makes things
easier (I cut a slit in them with an electric jigsaw and
used a
screwdriver to get them off).

All in all,  assuming there's no other complications it's
about an
afternoon's job - that's what it took me on my own. It's
just a pain in
the bum (note my UK roots here!) to have to disconnect
everything...

Tim(H)