I was having a good weekend..... now my heater's leaking

[scott.venables]

I've read on the AlfaBB that the US Milano has only one fan, where ours has one on each end of the shaft.  I'm sure oil will last in the bearings, it shouldn't get that hot/dusty.  My car already had a factory looking mesh cover over the fresh air inlet under the bonnet which I guess the US cars didn't get. There were still a couple of leaves in there.
 
By centre console I mean the handbrake console, with the gearlever boot in it.  Sorry, I could have been clearer on that.

I think I can conclude that soft solder is good enough for the resistor pack, mines still going strong after 3 weeks.

One other thing I did while I had the heater box out was replace the re-circ flaps on the sides of the box.  When you flick the control from fresh to re-circ, a stepper motor closes off a flap under the fresh air inlet.  So with the fan running, the fans now draw cabin air through the flaps on the side of the box.  Mine were both broken but I was able to adapt the ones out of the 90 box. 

Scott

[oz3litre]

Thanks for clarifying the console thing. One of the flaps on the side of my heater box is broken too, so I will try and fix that up as you suggest. So it looks like they did use soft solder as a fuse on the resistor pack as I thought. It would protect the system from getting red hot and burning out the wiring. When I was using solder it would simply melt and cut the power due to the overload caused by my nearly seized motor, whereas with the copper wire the power wire got hot enough to melt the insulation on the spade terminal and nearly blew the fuses. It could potentially have caused a fire. I have had enough car fires to last a lifetime and don't want another, so I might go back to using solder. I was quite sure that the resistor pack from my wreck had solder on it, that is why I was using it.

[Darryl]

You won't find an auto mfg using solder as a fuse/wire. I am however prepared to believe that the wire that was originally fitted may have been thin enough and have had sufficient resistance to act as a fuse. Maybe even made out of fuse wire I would not suggest using solder instead because of the risk it would fail for purely mechanical reasons.

[oz3litre]

It would be interesting to have a look at the resistor packs from a few cars to see what they had in there. It only takes a minute to pop it out if anyone wants to have a look and let us know. It is in the back of the heater unit above the radio, held in with a little clip which is easy to get off with a small screw driver. I will check my son's 3 litre when it comes back from the mechanic.