Whitfield Advantage T2 sn 69004 has odd blower motor symptom

The old saying here is clean oil and then clean again. Seriously, though, I think oiling the motors can't be overstated. I've a old Whitfield Advantage 2 and as long as I keep feeding oil to the motors they keep spinning. I do have to take them out and oil and spin by hand till they're good and free. Clean them fan blades also. I think when the motors get dry they rob power from something else trying to turn, so, you get weired things happening. bjr23

If the blower motor has oil ports you will need to oil it, as bjr23 says, a clean and properly lubricated convection blower is a happy blower. Otherwise you are heading for over fire (hi temperature) shutdowns.

With the stove off, unplugged, and cool, disconnect the wires to the blower and remove it from its mount being careful of the gasket. In fact get some gasket material just in case. Then clean all of the dust and crud from the motor, the cooling fan, and the blower. Place 2 or 3 drops of 20 weight oil (3 & 1 blue and white can, not the red and white can) into each port and spin the blower by hand until it is spinning freely, you may want to add another two drops to each port if it took a lot of effort to get the blower to turn freely (this is a sign that the bearing was almost totally dry and it will benefit form the additional oil). This should be done at least every 6 months of operation. I try to pull my convection fan every ton to ton and a half of pellets, that way I'm ahead of any issues (I've had more than a couple of over fire shutdowns and am on my third convection blower).

none of my motors have oil ports. but, what I do is take them out and apart, CLEAN THEM, and place TUFFLUBE a synthetic teflon pen oiler available at auto part stores right on the outside of the sealed bearings, spin them by hand for a while, and watch the sealed bearings suck up the oil. after a few cycles of this, clean up any excess oil, re-install and enjoy a much more quiet stove.
as far as your blower speeding up when your auger turns, this is what is known as a faulty neutral. you have 2 wires going to all of your 110 volt motors- one hot, one neutral. same as in your house wiring, the neutral, or return, should never be switched or interrupted. only the hot wire is controlled, by switches or control boards. if your room air blower speeds up when your auger is turning, you should take off and put back on ALL connections to your control board, one at a time ( stove unplugged, of course), and see if it may be a loose connection. if it persists, a couple of voltmeters and clipleads left on while running may help troubleshoot, as might re-flowing the solder on those same connections to the control board. this MAY require a new control board. please keep us posted. BTW- your best friend when troubleshooting this stuff is a handful of clip leads and 110 volt pilot lamps from radio shack. you can hook them up and see what is getting power when.

only the older motors had oil ports, all the new ones are sealed/ permanently lubed..
fasco recomends synthetic bearing oil where applicable, stating products like 3 and 1 can cxasue premature bearing failure, fyi

to the op,
if you need wiring diagrams, svc manual etc, pm me

Wood Heat Stoves said:

only the older motors had oil ports, all the new ones are sealed/ permanently lubed..
fasco recomends synthetic bearing oil where applicable, stating products like 3 and 1 can cxasue premature bearing failure, fyi

to the op,
if you need wiring diagrams, svc manual etc, pm me

Click to expand...

You know, that is interesting as the Fasco motor on my convection blower has oil ports and requires SAE 20 weight oil which is 3 & 1 blue and white can. The red and white can is a no no as it isn't even the correct weight oil.

This is why I say if the motor has ports oil it with the recommended oil which in my case (and has also been the case for the two other Fasco motored convection fans) SAE 20 weight oil, the recommended oiling frequency is every 6 months.

Just wonder How you made out with your problem as I have now something similar to what you stated...?

My Advantage 2T also does the blower speed up and down thing.

I am going to check out the wiring on the beast and see if there is an issue.

The small Whitfield (prodigy) has a "HAll Effect" control on the room air blower and this speeds the motor up and down depending on the feed setting.

IIRC the Advantage 2T has a setup where the room air blower is also controled at a minimum speed depending on the feed setting.

If I set my room blower on LOW and the feed on low it wont surge. If the feed is on 2-3-4 and I set the room blower on low the blower surges


Having a wiring issue would likley cause the surging no matter what setting the thing was on.

May be a quirk of the model too. ???????????

Some of the control boards are very wierd in how they were designed.

The stopping issue may be due to a bad variable speed controler on the board.

Snowy

You can not find a schematic for this control board, I've tried. These board were made for Whitfield all the chips are pre-programmed. There are no test points on these boards. That why they sell replacements for 300 and up.

Mr Whitfield said:

You can not find a schematic for this control board, I've tried. These board were made for Whitfield all the chips are pre-programmed. There are no test points on these boards. That why they sell replacements for 300 and up.

Click to expand...

I tried to get the schematic for this control board and they would not give it out.....But they can be traced out and repaired. (older boards from the Whitfields)

Snowy Rivers...

So My Supply fan surges abit so I guess that is no worries then... MIne surges abit no matter what speed I have the Auger feed set at... But I can only have my Convection fan set on low, Once I move the fan speeed off Low the motor sppeds up for a split second or two.. and then starts to rattle like crazy so for now I just leave the thing on Low fan setting werid wd. like to get that fix..but don`t want to spend big bucks on a Board when it may be something else though..

MOST pc boards can be fixed without schematics. I used to work for a used medical equipment company, and developed ways to fix the parts, when the parts were too expensive. You can use a regular ohmmeter to test resisters, capacitors, triacs, transistors and diodes. I actually designed and built a special piece of test equipment for this- a foot pedal that reverses the leads of the DVM for troubleshooting PC boards without having to reverse the test leads by hand. Modern o'scopes have built in curve tracers- I built one I remembered from USMC Electronics School called an Octopus, which puts a small AC current across the test leads and displays a curve- a diagonal line for a resister, a circle for a cap, an compound angled line for a semiconductor. I still have these in my toolbox. These are the most common failure parts. As far as the custom made chips, there are only a few companies big enough to make their own, such as Philips. Everybody else uses off the shelf chips that have a custom program built in. I have had some of these copied and programmed, and it was not expensive. Of course, my part was for a piece of medical laboratory equipment that a) I couldn't buy, and B) would be crazy expensive if I COULD buy it and C) the programmed chip made the sale which was huge.
There are companies that you can find on the web that do nothing but fix pc boards, also.
Good luck!
Bill

Hogs, sounds to me like the setscrews on the blower wheel, that hold it on to the motor shaft, have loosened up. Pull the blower motor and check it out- I have fixed many strange noises in my stove with hand tools and Teflon Pen Oiler Lube. Clean all the crap out of the blades while you are in there.
Bill

Thanks ..But I have had the motor off and also even taken it to a small electrica motor repair shop thats been there for many years and he said nothing wrong with the motor .. fan seems tight on the shaft I even Pluged it into a wall outlet when after I cleaned it all good etc. and the fan spins up to full speed while hooked directly into the wall no noises at all and it spins full speed...

that IS weird sounding! I would try, just for the hell of it, a lamp dimmer, or even better, a FAN dimmer, wired to the motor and eliminating the control board. Please let us all know what happens here!
BTW, was up in your neck of the woods on the last trips of the CAT. I have a dear friend in Mahone Bay, with her family in Lunenberg. What a beautiful place!
Bill

Thanks Bill,
Yeah its a puzzel for sure..right now I`m thinking I got heat never really turn it over 3 pellet feed and low fan setting is ok for number 3 so I think I will leave well enough alone for now..since I do have heat..but Pisses me off once I move the room fan of the low setting within a sec or two the motor slows down and rattles like its coming apart..

Werid..!

hogs said:

Snowy Rivers...

So My Supply fan surges abit so I guess that is no worries then... MIne surges abit no matter what speed I have the Auger feed set at... But I can only have my Convection fan set on low, Once I move the fan speeed off Low the motor sppeds up for a split second or two.. and then starts to rattle like crazy so for now I just leave the thing on Low fan setting werid wd. like to get that fix..but don`t want to spend big bucks on a Board when it may be something else though..

Click to expand...

Uncovered this out there on WWW:
c&p
These "IC's" U4 & U5 are not of a common breed. It is a ZIP style package more than anything. It has 8 normal pin size legs with 2 larger for a total of 10 leads. The larger I belive are an SCR of some sort that control the switching of these blower motors. I assume by the high failure rate of these they were underdesigned initially and unable to handle the high current/heat load. Hence the reason they now have a totally new and differently designed control board. I will take pictures of of the IC removed and post them. I also plan to cut one open just for fun...

Whitfield pellet stove this is a pellet stove like the one I need to repair... the electronics come into play by taking the signal from the heat sensor to control the auger for the pellets to drop into the burn pit, the electronics control the fans, both the burn fan and the exhaust fan...<hr></blockquote>I was searching for another controller for my Whitfield Advantage II stove and found this message thread. Both my combustion and convection fans intermittently stop, with the auger continuing to dump pellets into the burn chamber.

The controllers were manufactured by SSAC, who is in the business of producing cheap solid state OEM timers and controllers. I'm familiar with them, since AC power plant controllers I had at one place where I worked, once were also manufactured by SSAC...and they didn't work properly, either.

You can forget about getting a schematic for the Whitfield controller, since SSAC shaves off component markings and pots everything they can to prevent us from doing exactly what you want to do.

The local dealer who installed the pellet stove (I bought it with the house a few years ago) has been somewhat uncooperative to resolve this particular issue. I can't even get him to tell me how much a new controller costs so I can order it and pay him for it.****What appears to be happening here is that suddenly the fans abruptly stop, with what appears to be a DC braking voltage applied, while the auger motor continues to turn.
**** That looks like one or more triac switches failing for half the 60 cycle power wave form, leaving an imperfect DC voltage applied to the AC motors (they hum when this happens).**** There's no other place in the stove where DC voltage can be applied. If SSAC used triac in their controllers, it means they may have used cheap ones which are now failing at high-temperature, then returning back to "normal" when the stove cools down.
end c&p

Also, I found the various wiring diagrams out there...PM me and I'll fix you up.

Not currently an owner of a pellet stove...but have a lead on a used Whitfield Advantage II T insert...hence my research lately.

@Master of Smoke,

The text you've c&p'ed in this thread comes from a website for electronics enthusiasts.

http://forum.servomagazine.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=212&sid=43c7222640c8c6ddc03a7f968dcccbf8&start=30

I'ts a very interesting thread especially for Whitfield owners. I've studied it since 2008 when I bought my Whitfield pellet stove. It hasn't been active since september 2009, but they almost had figured out the internal schematics of one of the custom made thickfilm ICs!! One of the guys has even X-rayed the circuit (photos in the thread).

Unfortunately for denm (threadstarter here) it was an older Advantage II that they scrutinized. (rotary knob style control board).
Denm's Advantage II T has the newer touch pad control board.(T=touch pad, I guess) and so has my Quest Plus from 1998.

What would I do, if my stove started acting like denm's Advantage II T?
Well, as I have an education as electronics technician I wouldn't hesitate hooking the test leads of my oscilloscope on the testpoints at the bottom of the control board housing (shown on photo). Covered by four nylon plugs.
Healthy or unhealthy output signals from triacs or SCRs are very quickly diagnosed with a scope. A multimeter might not be enough.
Caution! There are lethal voltages here. If you're not used to this kind of operation, better leave it to the stove dealer.

Bo

You guys w/ Rotary Controls should be sure that the Current Sensing Relay is removed from the circuit.

This is, according to Whitfield, a *Redundant* part and causes more problems than it can cure.

Dealers were instructed to remove CSR's when ever servicing these models.

I posted, the other day, how to do this in another thread.

NOTE:

Pull the Plug before fiddling in your electric controls...Lethal Voltages are Present

MAster of Smoke...

Could you send me the link for this as my stove surges as well and I can`t seem to find the link u r talking about Thanks

hogs said:

MAster of Smoke...

Could you send me the link for this as my stove surges as well and I can`t seem to find the link u r talking about Thanks

Click to expand...

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/52798/#587907

A pellet stove is so simple in concept and design (should be)

The manufactire have taken these things way too far into the arena of electronics wizardry.

Here is a link to a company that sells solid state industrial controls .
http://www.precisiontimer.com/index.html

I have spent many hours siting and designing a new controller for my Whitfield.

Two relay timers are needed to operate the stove.

A "One shot" timer that operates to send power around the low temp switch during startup and the adustable on/off timer to control the time that the feed motor is on and off.

The whitfields can run happily with a feed time of about 1.5 to 2 seconds on and then lock that setting (relay available with that setting accessable by screwdriver only) and the off time (burn time) adjustble from .1 to 10 seconds with a knob

These are either 8 pin or 11 pin industrial type units that plug into a standard architecture relay base plug.

The original high temp/low temp safeties as well as the pressure switch are retained.

The draft/exhaust fan are run directly off the master switch so the exhaust runs anytime the stove master switch is ON.

The room air blower is connected to a rheostat and the rest is real basic.

The only extra I recommend is a a snap switch that will turn the room blower on high if someone forgets to turn the blower on and set it according to the heat setting.

(many older earthstoves had this feature and it was nice that you could leave the fans off until there was some heat in the unit)

If the stove reaches a predetermined high temp then the fan comes on anyway

This setup gives the operator complete adustment of the feed rates and the fans.

The exhaust fan can run full speed and if there needs to be any change in air flow to the fire it can be done with the damper.

These controls are readily available and can be swapped out quickly in the event of a failure.

The composit "Factory" boards for these older stove left a lot to be desired, especially when it came to reliability

I have marked the 636 PL5 and the one shot 634 G5K

Manufactures want to have propietary parts and that is understandable BUTTTTT when the stuff is flakey and many of the older boards were then one has to come up with better things.

WARNING

If you decide to wire up a controler, keep in mind that you MUST wire in all the original overtemp and undertemp safety snap switches and the pressure switch.

Failure to do this can place you, your home and others in danger.

The industrial controls are head and shoulders above the stock stuff in quality.

If you get a failure in one of these relays, its a matter of simply plugging in a fresh one.

Maybe all of a couple minutes depending on how you build your controller.

I like off the shelf technology that I can buy.

Once I get a controler into the size package that I can fit into the control panel opening on the Advantage II I will snap some pix and post them.

Currently my build is sitting on a piece of plastic project board with wires snaking around here and there and then off to the stove.

Just a matter of situating all the components onto a nice little panel and fitting it into the opening in the stove.

Best

Snowy