Dull Men's Club
An unofficial chapter of the popular Dull Men's Club.
1. Relevant commentary on your own dull life. Posts should be about your own dull, lived experience. This is our most important rule. Direct questions, random thoughts, comment baiting, advice seeking, many uses of "discuss" rarely comply with this rule.
2. Original, Fresh, Meaningful Content.
3. Avoid repetitive topics.
4. This is not a search engine
Use a search engine, a tradesperson, Reddit, friends, a specialist Facebook group, apps, Wikipedia, an AI chat, a reverse image search etc. to answer simple questions or identify objects. Also see rule 1, “comment baiting”.
There are a number of content specific communities with subject matter experts who can help you.
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5. Keep it dull. If it puts us to sleep, it’s on the right track. Examples of likely not dull: jokes, gross stuff (including toes), politics, religion, royalty, illness or injury, killing things for fun, or promotional content. Feel free to post these elsewhere.
6. No hate speech, sexism, or bullying No sexism, hate speech, degrading or excessively foul language, or other harmful language. No othering or dehumanizing of anyone or negativity towards any gender identity.
7. Proofread before posting. Use good grammar and punctuation. Avoid useless phrases. Some examples: - starting a post with "So" - starting a post with pointless phrases, like "I hope this is allowed" or “this is my first post” Only share good quality, cropped images. Do not share screenshots of images; share the original image.
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Exactly! I was in the same boat. Fan already didn't work, might as well pull it apart and see if it can be fixed.
It was surprisingly easy, and as long as you dont drop all the washers/spacers, there are really fewer parts than I pictured.
Getting the front cover off was a challenge due to all the years of gunk on the shaft, but since I was going to degrease it anyway, I used Dawn/hot water and scrubbed all the mess off and it slid out. That front shaft bearing with the rubbery feeling seal was unexpected also.
The video I liked is suuuuuper long (37 min) but most is the fan body disassembly and it had lots of helpful comments and tips for anyone interested.
Did you knock the shaft after reassembly? The guy showed tapping it from a few sides after reassembly to help it settle into, I'm assuming the old wear pattern, and spin more freely, and I felt that did help. I'm assuming it would eventually vibrate back into place on its own, but if a motor had more uneven wear, that might make a bigger difference, but it felt like a handy bonus tip.
I tried replacing my busted parts with washers I had on hand, but the nylon spacer that kept the rotor and shaft centered was in half a dozen pieces, and if the fan wasn't perfectly vertical it still made grinding noise. I leave the fan run 24/7 usually, so it isn't worth worrying about starting a fire or something, so I called it quits as an academic exercise in electric motor maintenance.
I'm glad you were able to repair yours! I was raised really frugally, and I feel bad scrapping so much material, but I don't want to take a chance with unsupervised electronics at this point in my life.