Regency F2400 blower is noisy

[ZipFunk]

Hi guys;

Just found this site and I'm hoping there's a few others that have had the same issue I have.

I've had two 2400's for 8+ years and they're great. My issue is with the blower on one of them. It seems to have a shimmy to it and rattles to the point where we have to shut it off to sleep. I've opened it up and noticed the 'turbines' had a wow to them. I ordered another fan from a dealer but asked to see it before I paid. This too had the same 'wow'. I tracked down the maker of the turbines and got him to send me a bunch. These are better but the shimmy is still there.

The 2400 in question is a newer one that doesn't have the side baffles welded to the frame.
The other one is welded. (to be clear, I'm not considering welding anything )

I'm hoping someone has some insight on this issue. A better replacement, or a work around. I'm open to any suggestions.

Thanks for listening.
Drew

 

[Lumber-Jack]

I have a Regency F2400 that came with the squirrel cage blower. It was fairly quiet when I first got it, but into the second year of use it started to get noisy, which I find irritating, so I took it apart and cleaned out all the dust bunnies with can make it unbalanced and cause it to rattle.When putting it back together I used silicon on all seams that might rattle and all was well,,,,,, for a while. After another year or two, and several more dis-assemblies, cleanings, and re-assemblies I found I just couldn't get it to run as quietly as it did when it was brand knew. The only thing I can assume was the problem was the bearings. It doesn't take much wear in a bearing and slight imbalance to cause a rattle in the assembly, and because it's connected to the rear heat shield on the stove that vibration gets amplified into noise.

I had a look at the bearings numbers and did a quick Google search and found you can pick them up fairly cheap on the internet, but I was going to see if I could find some locally. In the meantime I didn't want to listen to the rattle so I left the dis-assembled blower in a box and mounted a cheap wall mount fan I had on the wall behind, and slightly above, my stove and had it pointed so it would blow air across the top of the stove. I soon came to the realization that this worked much better then the factory blower. The wall mount fan had 3 speed settings compared to the blower which only had two. The wall mount fan is much quieter and moved much more air then the blower ever did, and I've never had to clean in the last 3 years I've been using it. The best thing is, the wall mount fan was like about around $12. I couldn't even by the blower bearings for that cheap.
It's a no brainer for me. I won't be putting that blower back on, in fact I think I threw the whole thing out last fall.

 

[Andrew77]

I did the same sort of thing. I took the blower off and have it just below the rear heat shield.
Odd that I have one upstairs that has never given me a minute of grief.
The downstairs one is set in a corner so I just may borrow your fan trick. I may build a nice little corner shelf for it. haha

Not to rub salt but I'm glad someone out there had the same issue and the same attitude towards it.
I get tired of going on forums, posting my issue, and having twenty replies of "Never had a problem". "Mine works great"

Drew

 

[revdocjim]

We installed a fairly old Napoleon 1400 last fall and used it all winter. But I almost never used the blower because of the noise. Then this fall I started burning again and tried the blower and now it won't even turn on. I think I'll be looking into a wall fan too. Just hope it isn't too ugly. Can any of you post pictures of your solution for reference?

 

[fishinpa]

I have a Quad 4300 step top and the fan noise became unbearable over 4 - 5 years or so.Yeas, I cleaned and lubed it regularly. My kid found a replacement, for something like $28.00 (instead of a factory replacement of 170.00'ish, so we tried it. It awsome, it is quiet and blows about the same amount of air. The original fan is 812-4900 and the replacement we got is MFB008. It looks similar the original fan posted about here. I really hope this helps and may make a fresh thread about this.

 

[Lumber-Jack]

We installed a fairly old Napoleon 1400 last fall and used it all winter. But I almost never used the blower because of the noise. Then this fall I started burning again and tried the blower and now it won't even turn on. I think I'll be looking into a wall fan too. Just hope it isn't too ugly. Can any of you post pictures of your solution for reference?

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder.
I just have my fan screwed to the wall behind the stove and so it looks like a fan mounted to the wall behind the stove. Nothing particularly pretty about it when it's not in use, but when it's cold out and the fire is going the heat I get from this configuration is beautiful.