Help Replacing Blower

[Josh_H]

Good Afternoon,
I have a Napoleon EPI3C fireplace insert. I've been running it for 5 winters and the blower has began making noise (i assume it's bearings). I ordered a replacement - not the exact Napoleon product, but a comparable unit. I wired it in place, built a fire and it never came on.

To troubleshoot I began by testing the outlet it's plugged into, that has electricity. I pulled the new blower out and wired directly to an outlet. It worked (i did the same for the old blower and that worked as well). Then i began stepping through the wiring inside the unit.

It goes as such. Power cord comes in, ground, nuetral and hot. The ground is screwed to a screw in the fireplace unit. The nuetral connects directly to a wire coming off the blower. The 'hot' goes to the fan 'on/off' (which also controls fan speed), then to the switch (when the door is opened the blower shuts off) then to a thermodisc and if it passes through those 3 'checks' the current goes to another wire on the blower unit completing the circuit.

I took the thermodisc out and bypassed it. I have tested each switch, the fan on/off followed by the button that turns off the fan when the door is opened when I hook up my multimeter to the wire that goes directly to the blower (the nuetral) and the wire that goes comes thru the on/off, thermodisc (i bypassed) and lastly the button that when depressed closes the circuit I have full power. everything is good as far as i can tell testing those pieces. When I add the wires from the new blower (or the old blower for that matter as i cannot get either to work at this point) the reading on multimeter goes to '0'.

Any thoughts on why adding a blower to the circuit essentially opens the circuit up?

Thanks for any and all feedback.

 

[begreen]

If you have already carefully (this is line voltage) tried bypassing each component, then the problem may be in the connecting wiring. A common failure point can be at the crimped spade lug connector. Check the wiring itself between each point for continuity with the unit unplugged.

 

[Josh_H]

Thank you for the quick reply. If you look at the picture, you can see the red circle is my thermodisc bypass and the purple circle is my thumb pressing the button - the leads on the multimeter are connected to the neutral and the hot that has gone through the various ‘checks’. My output on the multimeter at this point is how it should be. The moment I attack wires from one of the two blowers - the reading on the multimeter goes to zero.