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There are two plugs on a removable piece screwed onto my a/c evap box under my hood. When you remove it, it looks like a miniature heat element or somthing similar on the back side.(Two sets of coils) Has dual three prong plug ins going into it. Reason im asking is im in the middle of a frame up restoration and a few years ago I was driving down the road and had a fire start in my a/c evap box and without pouring the beer in the back of my truck on it my truck would have burned up. My uncle has one identical to mine and his caught on fire in his building and burned the truck up as well as his building. His fire started in the evap box as well. Whats this little thing for?
It's the resistor controlling the blower fan speeds, keeping it in the air flow keeps it cool until the box becomes clogged with leaves and debris after which times fires start.
It's generally a good practice to remove the blower motor and clean out in there periodically....
I inadvertently did the same thing. I pulled the blower motor which was pushing air past the resistors and keeping them from glowing red hot. When I pulled the blower and then proceeded to turn it on a fire broke out from all the pine needles and leaves stuck around it. WHEW I certainly dodged a bullet. Talk about a bad design...
They have had this design at least since the 50's. Besides catching on fire, leaves and pine needles clog up the A/C and heat coils. So even if they came up with a new design that would not catch fire, you would still have leaves laying in there rotting and clogging up things.
A lot of the newer cars did go to a pulse width modulation design with a electronic box to control the blower, much like a light dimmer in your house. But they are prone to burn out and very expensive to replace.