Hacking a car
Cars have always been one of those things I never understood much of. I've look under the bonnet of a few cars before, but what you could see was mainly just a big slab of plastic. Since we got our old Ford Escort from '91 last year, this has changed a bit.
Shortly after we bought the car, the thermometer in the cooling system needed to be replaced. I was told which spare parts to get, and roughly where the thing I needed to replace was located, and I actually managed to change it without damaging the car or myself too much.
Since then, I've gotten to understand more and more about our car, and have been able to fix a few other minor things, but the latest one was too difficult, and I needed a professional so I got hold of my dad :) (he is a trained ford mechanic, and even though it's been more than 30 years since he worked as a mechanic he still now what he's doing).
The problem was with the fan that blows air into the car, and that can be quite a big problem in the winter, with steamy windows and frost that wont go away because we can't blow warm air up on the windows. We started out last week, looking at the wiring around the switch that controls the fan and found that it sometimes just didn't get enough juice to be able to send a signal to the fan, telling it to start. A temporary fix seemed to solve the problems, but after a few days it was back.
Last night we went all in. We took apart most of the dashboard to look for faulty wires as well as remove the fan itself. We tried to replace a wire from the fusebox to the switch, but it didn't help, and after having tested a range of different wires running to and from the fusebox, dashboard and fan, we decided to do a quick hack. Somewhere in the electrical system there is a flaw, which results in too little power for the fan to start, and we then needed to make sure it got power, without running at full speed the whole time.
Having tried a few different configurations, we ended up pulling power directly from the battery via a control switch that is also hooked up directly to the switch and an almost randomly chosen wire that is live when the ignition is on. The result is that the fan works (even if the engine isn't turned on, and even without the ignition is on but with the light on - a strange side effect that also serves as a reminder that the lights are on :) ) but it is most definitely not the "authorized" way of doing it, and we're bypassing a few different systems on the way.
Most certainly a hack, even though I've never thought of hacking a car :) Quite an interesting experience actually...
Shortly after we bought the car, the thermometer in the cooling system needed to be replaced. I was told which spare parts to get, and roughly where the thing I needed to replace was located, and I actually managed to change it without damaging the car or myself too much.
Since then, I've gotten to understand more and more about our car, and have been able to fix a few other minor things, but the latest one was too difficult, and I needed a professional so I got hold of my dad :) (he is a trained ford mechanic, and even though it's been more than 30 years since he worked as a mechanic he still now what he's doing).
The problem was with the fan that blows air into the car, and that can be quite a big problem in the winter, with steamy windows and frost that wont go away because we can't blow warm air up on the windows. We started out last week, looking at the wiring around the switch that controls the fan and found that it sometimes just didn't get enough juice to be able to send a signal to the fan, telling it to start. A temporary fix seemed to solve the problems, but after a few days it was back.
Last night we went all in. We took apart most of the dashboard to look for faulty wires as well as remove the fan itself. We tried to replace a wire from the fusebox to the switch, but it didn't help, and after having tested a range of different wires running to and from the fusebox, dashboard and fan, we decided to do a quick hack. Somewhere in the electrical system there is a flaw, which results in too little power for the fan to start, and we then needed to make sure it got power, without running at full speed the whole time.
Having tried a few different configurations, we ended up pulling power directly from the battery via a control switch that is also hooked up directly to the switch and an almost randomly chosen wire that is live when the ignition is on. The result is that the fan works (even if the engine isn't turned on, and even without the ignition is on but with the light on - a strange side effect that also serves as a reminder that the lights are on :) ) but it is most definitely not the "authorized" way of doing it, and we're bypassing a few different systems on the way.
Most certainly a hack, even though I've never thought of hacking a car :) Quite an interesting experience actually...
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