Life was good rolling down the highway right up until I noticed that there was little heat coming out of the vents and the fan was switched on. But fortunately there is enough heat just leaking out once the rig is warm that I don’t need much more.
After I got home it was time to trouble shoot. And here was another great reason to have a manual handy. A heater that fails to function could be for a number of reasons, bad switch, bad fan, circuit breaker, heater relay etc… Lucky for me I have an FSM. And after a quick read I was able to find and fix the problem.
Toyota had a lot of good ideas when they first built these things and the one thing they did for me in this instance was the idea for a resetable circuit breaker. Which just so happened to be the problem on my heater, this time…
But the one thing they weren’t good at was a description of just where this thing is. All the manual says is close to the fuse box. The picture should give you a much better idea of its location. If you look in the photo you can see the hood release cable which should put you really close. That black box on the left is a non stock brake control so don’t look for that in your rig. So just lay on your back with your head down by the clutch and brake pedal, look up and you will see it sticking out of a major wire bundle…
But do remember this is in an early wagon, I think most of them were the same up until 1988 when the location got moved to the fuse panel in a 62.
The circuit breaker is that little silver object in the picture. And if you look carefully you will notice a small hole in the cover. What that small hole allows you to do is reset the breaker. All it takes is a narrow piece of steel, I used a paper clip. Once you push it in the hole, if it’s tripped you will hear it click back into place. And after a quick check with my multi meter to verify that the breaker still worked, it was reinstalled and the heater fired right up.
Thankfully it was a simple fix.
