new convection blower for castile?

cleaned the convection blower and pulled out a hamsters worth of hair from the wheels. performance went up considerably but now getting a rubbing sound ftom the blower. seemed to spin freely when out.

Did you get the blower back on the stove level, vertical, and tight. Having a blower that has operated in one position shifted slightly will make things just enough different for it to start wearing where it never did before and are you certain you got all of the mess out and didn't push some of it to where it is causing your rubbing noise. Also if the blower was oil-able (motor plate should say) did you oil it when it was out?

I states it does not need lube. I did put some oil on moving areas anyway. should I pull it and hook it to a plug to see if it makes noise away from stove? I pulled it and re-cleaned it JIK so I dont think anything is in there rubbing but I may have to do again. It was a real mess, not moving much air but quiet.

Make sure it is back exactly where it was when you pulled it and if the air flow has changed a lot through the system it could be the fan was always rubbing but it was muffled by the crud.

can I do this when troublshooting? will it damage the motor?

Yes and as for hurting the motor only if you stick something into it and twist it or hit it with something just removing it won't hurt the motor at all.

I had the "mouse" effect with my Castille last year. I did not pull the blower but blew and sucked out as much crap as I could with my Rigid w/hepa when the stove was cold. That seemed to do the trick.
My motor also had no lube options.

I think your post made me think of cleaning it. actually very easy to remove.

The noise did eventually stop on its own.

I do have another question. The vast majority of air comes out of the left side tubes I think primarily #4. is this normal?

Same with mine, the left 4 tubes seem to always have more air coming out of them. Do you have 8 or 10 tubes?

i believe 10

There are 8 on mine.

You might find this thread interesting. It follows an experiment that a few of us did last year to extract more heat out of the tubes. It shows heat measurement of the air as well as air flows.

http://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/quadrafire-castile-experiment.58216/page-6 This is the page with the air flows but all the pages are good reading. Someone else just ordered springs this fall.

I tried the springs this past Saturday and it ended up having a negative effect. Much less airflow out of the heat exchanger tubes and about an 8* increase in exhaust temps. I took them out the next day.

I have seen this thread. If im reading the wind speeds correctly they seem kind of even through most tubes. mine are substantially biased to the left. hence my question if that was normal?

Sorry to hear that! How did you measure your airflow?

Yes, for me it was just the outer ones that almost have no airflow. Right to left seemed fairly balanced.
I wonder if some of that hamster dirt clogged your tubes.

Also, the telling thing for me was that, even though the flow rates went down slightly, the exhaust temperature also went down, which means that less heat is going up the stack so it has to be going into the room. i.e. more efficient.

Don't forget the squirrel cages too: the fins on the right side may need a cleaning.

Mine has 8 tubes... the flow is fairly even. The 2nd & 3rd ones are a little more than the others, but it's not a drastic difference.

thanks, It sounds like I need to do some more investigation