I have two mobile home furnaces heating my place. Both are ancient and have had no, and I mean no, maintenance in umpteen many years. One was barely running when I moved in and made unholy death noises every time it decided to come on. The other one was pretty quiet and reliable. Last night the good one got a lot quieter. Too quiet. And it started getting cold in the back half of the house which included the living room and two bedrooms. By the time I got home and started tearing things apart it was 5am. We were heating the house by overheating the front part with the other furnace and the gas stove and trying to move the warm air over into the back.
I found that the blower motor had locked up and wasn't allowing the fan to turn. I got the blower cage off and turned in for the night (well, morning). The next (well, same) morning, I tore the motor apart and found that the bushings that the armature turns in were tightly bound to the armature shaft. There are two bushings that need oiled and not only were they bone dry, the sponges that hold the oil had disintegrated into crumbles.
So I took apart the motor by driving the shaft out of the housing with a drift pin and emery clothed the shafts and bushings. Cleaned up the armature while I'm in there, and reassembled. Made some new sponge inserts, cleaned and greased and lubed and oiled the hell out of everything. Bolted the motor to the squirrelcage, stuck her back onto the furnace and fired that puppy up.
HEAT!!!!
Wonder when the next one will go up? Maybe a little maintenance is in order.
Note to self: Olive oil is a fine field-expedient lubricant. Not, however, suitable for high speed applications.
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