Season 16 with the E100 Wood Gun begins.

[Gasifier]

The Wood Gun has been running for a few hours at a time for a couple weeks now for season 16. Burned through some leftover White Pine from last year and now have moved onto this year’s EAB dead White Ash and Elm.

I brought my fan motor to a local shop by the name of Lawton Electric. These guys are great. They pulled my motor apart and put new bearings in and fixed a broken off bolt/stud. Made my motor like new again. It didn’t have that many hours on it. But had sat a long time new in a box. So the bearings had gone bad.

Anyway, she is humming along nice and quiet and bringing the rest of the firewood in under cover this week.

 

[Gasifier]

After Lawton Electric fixed the motor all up they even painted it up to make it look great again. If you ever need a motor fixed in the Lisbon/Ogdensburg, NY or surrounding area, I can’t recommend them enough.

 

[Gasifier]

 

[brenndatomu]

They pulled my motor apart and put new bearings in and fixed a broken off bolt/stud. Made my motor like new again. It didn’t have that many hours on it. But had sat a long time new in a box. So the bearings had gone bad.

Must have been stored in a moist environment at some point in its life...bearings failing on the shelf is rare.
If you look in the manual (at least on larger motors) it will tell you to rotate the motor 1X/mo to prevent bearing failure (and/or mechanical seal failure, on pumps)...but almost NOBODY actually does it. Our local pump dealer was preaching this at me one day and he had forgot that I've been in their warehouse...I asked him if they actually rotate all their new stock that is sitting around (most on typical warehouse shelves in a high bay) he kinda shuffled his feet and mumbled a "no, but stuff doesn't sit on our shelf long enough to worry about it"....BULLCRAP! I know for a fact that some of the less common part numbers sit there for a year or two sometimes!

they even painted it up to make it look great again

Typical motor shop stuff there...don't look too closely, their paint job is usually a "10 footer"...in other words, looks good from 10' away, or more. They might have done better on a small one like that though...on large motors (like 100HP) the paint job is often not that great. If it's something that actually matters, I'll often repaint it before install.

Glad to hear you found someone willing to fix you up...some shops don't want to dink with the small ones anymore...even larger motors (like up to 15-20HP) they don't want to rewind, unless there is no other option...cheaper to replace.