Fasco fan replacement or lube to quiet it

[zrtmatos]

I am looking to either replace or service a convection fan on a 2006 Enviro Meridian. Model is EF-002-220V. What is the best lubrication for these fans? I am trying to bring down it's noise level to a minimum. Any suggestions?

 

[SidecarFlip]

All fans and auger drives on all units are shaded pole synchronous motors, basically the simplest motor made but like all simple devices, made as cheaply as possible (and sold at an excessive profit).... You need to pull the fan/motor assembly and remove the motor on the bench and pull the outboard bearing carrier and inboard and clean them and relube them with light oil. Usually, they are oil impregnated sleeve bearings so I take the bearing carriers and soak them in a can filled with motor oil overnight and the reassemble. If you drill (carefully) a small hole in the carrier on the upper side, you can oil the carriers without taking them apart next time.....

Synchronous motors will all produce a bit of noise, thats inherent with the design. None are absolutely quiet.

 

[Ranger72]

The fans in my Whitfield are Fasco brand and 20w oil works fine.

 

[zrtmatos]

All fans and auger drives on all units are shaded pole synchronous motors, basically the simplest motor made but like all simple devices, made as cheaply as possible (and sold at an excessive profit).... You need to pull the fan/motor assembly and remove the motor on the bench and pull the outboard bearing carrier and inboard and clean them and relube them with light oil. Usually, they are oil impregnated sleeve bearings so I take the bearing carriers and soak them in a can filled with motor oil overnight and the reassemble. If you drill (carefully) a small hole in the carrier on the upper side, you can oil the carriers without taking them apart next time.....

Synchronous motors will all produce a bit of noise, thats inherent with the design. None are absolutely quiet.

What do you mean by "You need to pull the fan/motor assembly and remove the motor on the bench and pull the outboard bearing carrier and inboard"? Is this something done easily for a weekend mechanic?

 

[SidecarFlip]

What do you mean by "You need to pull the fan/motor assembly and remove the motor on the bench and pull the outboard bearing carrier and inboard"? Is this something done easily for a weekend mechanic?

I'm a 'weekend mechanic' myself, well semi retired farmer but certainly, disassembling any fan or auger motor is a simple undertaking. Just be sure when you pull the armature out (after pulling the outboard bearing cap, to not loose the tiny thrust washers on each end of the armature and have the correct amount on each end.... Synchronous shaded pole motors are brushless so it's just the field windings (which are wound around a laminated core), the outboard bearing cap and the armature. Usually the inboard bearing will be part of the fan or reduction box assembly (in the case of an auger drive). Real simple stuff.

I'm still on my original motors on my almost 10 year old 6039 multifuel. I take them out every summer and lube them up, clean the inside of the mechanical section of the stove and put it back together again.

I keep my stove unplugged all summer. Found ot the hard way that summertime electrical storms will fry the computer so it stays unplugged in the summer and on a line conditioner in the winter...

On auger reduction gearboxes and stirrer (agitator drives), I split the gearboxes ever year when I lube the motor bearings and make sure the grease inside hasn't gotten hard (it gets hard from the heat of operation and don't grease the gears anymore, leading to faliure)... If it's hard, I take a popsickle stick and clean the old grease out and repack the gearboxes with new, high quality bearing grease (which incidentially gets hard with age too) so thats an ongoing job as well, but cheaper in the long run than a new drive ot failure on a cold winter night (because I use my 6039 as a primary heat source, in fact it heats our 2 story century farm home quite well (with a little help from the furnace blower that I have set to run for 5 minutes every half hour.

I may run corn this year (first year in the last 5 that I've considered it) because the per bushel cost is reasonable.

I never run straight corn (I could), but I mix my corn and pellets 50-50 and the custom adjust the feed rate and primary air for proper combustion, which I may do or may not do. When I used to run corn years ago, I never cleaned it (contrary to practice). I had it delivered and augered into one of our grain bins, bought pre-cleaned screened corn for livestock ration. I'd go get a front end loader bucket full out of the grain bin dump, take it over to the deck and nix pellets and corn in 40 pound allotments. Makes it easier for my wife to get...all out of the same garbage cans.

Never had issue one with chaff or anuthing, just burned everything. I think cleaning corn is a bunch of phooey myself.....

I've prebought 5 ton of Somerset pellets, same ones I used last year and the year before, good pellets, burn well with little ash (fly or ashpan). I pick up my pellets all at one time and store the pallets of pellets in the barn, keeping 4 plastic garbage cans full on the back deck. That way, the wife can go out and get a 5 gallon pail of pellets twice a day and keep the bin on the stove full.

When it's time to fill the cans, I load the front end loader tractor with 16 bags and refill the cans for her.

We never shut it down in cold weather, except to clean it weekly, it basically runs nonstop from November through the end of March.

Been doing this a lot of years now. I think almost 30 years. Thats a lot of corn and pellets. Saved me a bunch on propane costs, I know that. Gives me extra money to go hunting.....lol

Cook'in right now, just looked over at it. The dog is sprawled out in front of it, cats too.

Always glad to help btw. Don't come here much but I do read the posts quite a bit.

Stay warm....