Exhaust blower cleaning questions

[breklaw]

I woke to a horrible sound this morning. My combustion blower was howling, like it did when cold, but usually cleared after getting hot. I took the blower out. I WD40'd and used compessed air and scraped and Qtipped everything and then I took aprart the blower. Need special tools here, Torx wrenches. Bearings FEEL bad. Should be smoother, but feels bumpy, hard to describe. Flooded bearings w/ WD40, re-assembled, bearings feel much better, and installed, amazing decrease in sound level (yeah !!) suspect this will be a short fix due to high temp and volatility of lube. I am assuming these sealed bearings absorbed some lube. Please advise. Also, noticed some slight abrasion by outside fan on combustion blower that appeared to be causing some noise. This fan, which is pressed onto the shaft, can move on the shaft, hitting the housing on either side. This may have been the loud noise on cold start- the position of the external cooling fan on the shaft may have shifted as the length of the shaft expanded during warm up, causing the fan to move away from the housing enough to clear it.

 

[HD41]

My combustion blower had been noisy (singing) since new on the #1 and #2 settings and I accepted this as normal if not pleasant. After one season of heating I decided to clean the combustion blower and found only a light coating of ash, hardly worth the time. After cleaning the blower would really howl until the pellets ignited heating the combustion blower. It was much noisier (whining) on the #1 and #2 settings but on #3 and seemed to go away, the air noise may have masked some. After a couple of weeks the noise diminished to about to the way it was when I got the stove new. At this point I decided to contact ESW and find out what was normal, I got a response to call so they could hear the noise. Before I made the call the weather warmed up and I had the stove shut down for a couple of days. When I restarted on 5-5 setting the combustion blower was quieter on #1 and #2 settings, the singing diminished to a hum. On the higher settings air noise masks any combustion blower noise. I have no answer as to how stove fixed itself. For now I will wait and see what develops.

 

[charles u farley]

WD-40 is a poor lubricant. It's mostly solvents and will dry up leaving not much other than a sticky film.
Almost anything specifically labeled as 'oil' will do a better job. 3-in-one or sewing machine oil can be found in small squeeze bottles at a department store. Either would be far better suited for the motor bearings.