I'm trying to solve my burnt out rectifier problem and discovered today that the regulator wasn't connected. Now im no Einstein but I reckon that played a major part!

Now to the fan... I connect it to my car batt charger and it spins. Not massively fast (but then I dunno how fast it's supposed to be) and the batt charger cuts out after a few secs because of the amount of amps it's taking to power it! Surely a car batt charger should have no trouble right?

Now it's not an all singing all dancing charger just a basic one and for all I know it may only have a 3amp output It doesn't say.

The fan itself spins freely by hand with no resistance at all and no noise, when it's running it's nice and quiet and there doesn't appear to be be anything wrong.

Also does anyone know what amps the standard rectifiers are rated at? If I can find out what the fan is actually drawing compared to what the rectifiers are rated at then I'll know if I'm going to run into trouble if I get a new one!

It's a 2001 TXT280

I would venture to guess the small fan motor would run at 2-4 amps, so may be to much for your small charger whis is not really designed to run things like that anyway.

If your regulator was disconnected this may explain things due to over voltage. Fix that and ck to see the fan runs normally under proper voltage.

Can't help with the rectifier specs but if any use to you this is the spec of my fan motor:

No-load current drain 0,4 A

Current drain at max. efficiency 2 A

Current drain when stalled 10 A

If the motor windings are shorted out / beginning to fail it will draw more current.

By the way I wouldn't use your charger as a power supply as the charger will only deliver unfiltered rectified AC (aka pulsed DC) which is not the steady 12v dc that the motor needs to run properly. You might also damage your charger.

Thanks guys I'll see if I can get the motor tested before I put a new rectifier on just to be sure... Can you confirm that the regulator wire just "piggy backs" the AC feed wire so to speak? There must be a connector missing somewhere because the plug on the regulator wire doesn't look like its been plugged into anything for quite sometime.... :/

Yes correct it does just 'piggy back'.

Ta muchly

Tested my fan today and its at 2ohm which means its drawing 6amps. Seems an awfull lot for a small fan so, big up to the 'pinned topic' Fan motor replacement cos i reckon thats my next task!

Tested my fan today and its at 2ohm which means its drawing 6amps. Seems an awfull lot for a small fan so, big up to the 'pinned topic' Fan motor replacement cos i reckon thats my next task!

Does your DVOM not have a ammeter function that you can put it in series with a battery supply voltage to properly test it dynamically? If the thing runs at normal speed at 12V it should be fine.

Unfortunately not no... Although it runs it seems to be quite slow, to the point where I can only just feel a draught coming fom it.

Unfortunately not no... Although it runs it seems to be quite slow, to the point where I can only just feel a draught coming fom it.

I would think a properly working fan motor with a decent power supply(not the charger) should have a good buzz to it. Possibly the overvoltage(no regulator) has overstressed the motor over time and it is sluggish.

Thoughts anyway,

Cheers, MC