New owner with ventilation problem

If the AC ECU is bad (and the blower speed controller good), it is rather simple to rig-up a separate manual blower speed control using a potentiometer wired as on this diagram.

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Did you ever make gears?

I need the middle gear top photo of Post 173

 

No I never did as I found another unit and just bolted it in. But one of these days I'm going to have to.

There was a guy out here who did make them out of Japan and he offered to sell them I contacted him he wanted $750 us per gear.

Pitch and radius and you can but them online it's just detective work is all.

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Typo? I was told about U$276.

Anyway, that was for a complex gear with no metal parts. The middle gear top photo of Post 173 is a simpler gear with a metal axle.

 

Right yes, I wanted 2 I mis spoke. When mine fails I will tackle that, best way is replace both gears instead of trying to match them exactly.
There are literally site that sell nothing but thousands of nylon gears. There is no Ferrari black magic here.

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Damn my one gear is obliterated

 

https://gearsmade.com/

 

Nice find John!

 

I'm communicating with the company now. Sent some pictures of the gear. Will update.

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John that is the motor for air vent selector not the recirc flap, correct?

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Ferrari seems to have used 2 different recirc flap actuators. One is shown at the top of the image below. The middle image is the 2nd type of recirc flap actuator (the one from my post 184 above). It is mechanically identical to the air vent actuator, shown at the bottom, without the potentiometer.

So unless you have the top style recirc flap actuator, both recirc and air vent used the same gear set, and seem the have the same gear failure.

Anyway, I contacted the guy who makes gears and his response was "Can't you buy a new actuator?" I said, NLA. And he hasn't gotten back to me which I interpret as it wouldn't be cost effective. I asked about 12 gears. Maybe if I was interested in 1000. I imaging it's the set up time that makes it prohibitive in his mind. So back to searching for something that could be adapted to the 348/355.



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OK, when I contacted gearsmade.com the initial reply was, "Can't you buy a new unit?" I replied, NLA. There was no response from gearsmade which I take as "not cost effective". I was afraid that might be the case as set up costs would be the major cost for making these. So I will continue to look for an adaptable substitute unit.

 

Someone with electrical knowledge may be able to assist here.

This is one of the threads I watch and this weekend I did some investigation about an idea I had for awhile. Primarily because I always consider how parts availability is impacting keeping these cars running long term, similar to my comments in the aftermarket rear light thread recently.

The recirc flap motor - #6330670, is available for purchase through various suppliers.
The air vent direction motor - #63307100, is no longer available.

I examined both of these and they share the same form factor in terms of screw hole mounting positions and spindle positions. Both have 6mm wide spindles with the same "cut" along one corner.

Differences are #6330670's spindle protrudes 12mm from its base. Whereas #6330710's spindle protrudes 9mm out from it's base. And the obvious big difference is #6330710 has a potentiometer to let the ECU know it's spindle position so it can move accordingly to the desired vent location.

With 3mm in depth available due to the spindle length differences, would it be possible to add a hollow shaft potentiometer to #6330670, literally just place it on the outside of the housing over the shaft, and reuse the stock wire harness to connect both the pot and the motor housing to the car? Something along these lines:

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And if so, besides the shaft hole size of 6mm, what would the electronic specs of the potentiometer need to be?

I have a spare #6330670 flap motor, I don't mind buying the potentiometer and mocking it up, testing it and reporting back, I'm just not sure what potentiometer to buy.

 

Like this, to picture what I'm saying:

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As you can see, the gear that disintegrates is nylon with a lower durometer overmolded spur gear. On every bad actuator I've seen, the overmolded part has turned to a brittle mess, that loses a few teeth then just falls apart. The really bad ones will basically turn into powder as soon as you touch them. The overmolded part is usually added to keep the actuator quiet and, ironically, to protect the gear teeth and make them last. But, since these actuators rarely ever move on these cars, their worst threat is just old age.

I've developed some 100% nylon gears, and run them in a few cars so far with no problems.

 

Nice! Are you selling these gears?

 

Phil. I'm considering selling them in the future, for now I'd like to assemble a few more actuators with them to make sure I don't find big variances in the different actuators. It might be smarter to only offer them as part of a rebuild service so that I can make sure everything is put together properly and bench test them. At least until I've done enough to make sure that it's a straightforward install. I do need some more actuators to test though, so I need some people with bad actuators.

 

Thanks, if you decide to sell the gears let me know, I am always looking for spares for when the inevitable day comes...

 

Hi Rob, I'm in the same boat as the others. Please add me to your list. I'm close to preparing a CAD myself and paying to have a few gears made and would prefer not to reinvent the wheel.

Take care.
Jim

 

+1

Happy to commit to an order. My HVAC vent/heat/defrost selector isn't working and while I haven't diagnosed it I wouldn't mind having the gears on hand just in case.

 

+1 (or +2 depending on the price) My local tech might be interested to see these.

 

I've just finished a good set up too. 3-d nylon, the test unit seems to perform quite well. I've got 2-3 more right now, but can easily get more.

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After looking into various options on replacing the problematic gear, I decided to take a different approach. I was able to source a 45t 0.5 mod spur gear from KHK Japan, and a matching 8t 0.5 mod pinion from Horizon Hobby. I cut off the molded spur gear from the old worm gear and turned the worm gear down to 6.00 mm dia and back 6.50 mm from the tip using a little makeshift mill at home. I shaved down the hub of the new KHK spur gear so that the total gear+hub thickness was 4.50 mm. Then, drilled out the hub of the KHK spur gear 5.90 mm which made for a sweet press-fit onto the worm gear. The little pinion gear required a drill out to just under 2 mm to allow for a press fit onto the motor. Gear mesh is perfect. So, that's a solution for $10 in 2 gears and some time. Gear PNs are shown in one of the photos. I hope this is helpful for someone.

Regards,
Jim C.
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Another source from Japan at a better price then previous offering from Japan: https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/o1023285592

 

My Japanese is a little rusty. Do we need a YahooJapan account... and is that just a (starting) bidding price? I see there are nine for sale.... Are we bidding on all 9?