Well, its been a busy day today since I've started this blog. I had to post up about the Breakfaster which I did about a month ago, but then also made the headphones this morning and posted it. However, since it's snowing again here, I got stuck inside and decided to tackle this old Arvin fan that I picked up yesterday. I was poking around an antique shop and found this guy:
It didn't have a price tag and the owner plugged it in for me to see if it worked. Well, it turned on the fan with a bit of a battle cry, slowly building speed but not really getting anywhere. Then I kicked on the heater and the fan stopped moving and the heater came on an burned off at least 20 years of dust. Bit of a scary moment as I though I was going to burn the guys shop down with this thing. He shook his head and said "I'll sell it for 5 bucks, but I'm not responsible if your house burns down." Hell, for 5 bucks I took it just for the sake that it still looked cool just chilling in my garage.
Onward and upward, I started taking this thing apart since it was so filthy. I figured if nothing else I can clean the motor and see if that helps with the lag. The front grill was a bit banged up so I took it off first and showed it affection with a hammer.
A lot of the hardware was showing it's age. Took off most every bolt and nut and let it sit in WD-40 for a while before hitting them with a wire brush to knock off the bulk of the rust.
Removed the heating unit to get it clean and get underneath on the shroud.
Flipped it to start getting at the motor.
Think there is a reason it was struggling to generate power?
Inside the motor housing.
Inside the base to get to the controls.
The start of cleaning up the motor.
I forgot to take a pic of when I actually got the motor and coil cleaned. It was actually in really great shape and just needed to have all the old muck cleared out. You can see how shiny and bright the coil is inside the plastic, the whole unit actually was in decent shape. I cleaned the motor gear/wheel/block whatever you call it and put some bearing grease in to give it that clean motion and quiet it down a bit.
I cleaned the metal pieces to get the dust and old grime off. I didn't go crazy with the scrubbing as this had a bunch of old paint spots on it that I actually really like. Gives is that studio/garage feel of something that has actually been used like it should have been. I really like the paint splatter on the blades.
I'm very glad my sister is tollerant of me destroying the house with my projects. Everything from antiques to motorcycle parts to electronics, I explode objects and use every facility in the house to get what I need done, including the kitchen sink (which took a bit of scrubbing out today).
Reassembly. Always take lots of pics just so you can look back at how the thing went back together. I can never remember...
And here she is, running like a top!
Got the heater working with the fan, it comes on very quickly now and has plenty of power to run both. This thing is a lot quieter than I expected, its pretty silent. So far, my house hasn't burned down. The heater isn't all that hot, but as you can see the wires are glowing red so I can't expect much more from that. Just old technology. Still a fun little fan and I'm sure it'll come in handy during the summer while working on the bikes in the garage. It gets pretty warm here.
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