Last night I fixed a motor. It was mounted on an aluminum baseplate which was cocked fifteen degrees off square from the fan casing. Replacing it meant opening the breakers and verifying the line and load wires and cutting off the belt. After unbolting it it slid freely off the frame and threatened to fall on the concrete but luckily it was caught by a spandrel beam. It weighed about forty pounds and smelled of burnt plastic. The new motor was lighter and upon closer inspection it was obvious that it was not a like-for-like replacement. It had smaller capacitors and the wiring compartment was not integral to the motor but was housed in an annex and the motor shaft was slightly longer. It would require new mounting holes be drilled into the baseplate to fit its frame and it would also require measuring out the sheave to get the positioning right, meaning flush with the pulleys in the fancage. The frame was removed and a step bit was used to bore the new holes to ⅝” to fit the retaining bolts on hand. Then the frame was replaced and secured fingertight to the nuts on the allthread. Both shafts were measured and the motor was bolted on and its shaft was sharpied and the sheave was fitted to the shaft to obscure the sharpiemarks and the key was locked into place with an allen wrench. Then the belt was fitted to the fan pulley, the idler pulley, and finally the drive pulley. There was no other order in which the belt could be fitted without taking the fan cage apart. Upon installation it was found that the belt was too tight—the baseplate would have to be lowered another quarter or half-inch so as not to overload the motor. The nuts suspended on the allthread were tightened in eighths of a flat with a crescent wrench to let the baseplate down until some slack was visible in the belt. Slack was taken by plucking the belt like a string and observing its vibration.
The new motor was painted a gray that was almost green. The new motor’s shaft shone with a dull luster. When opened, the wiring compartment smelled of fresh plastics, a certain synthetic smell. The wires were unordered and clumped and required prying from the annex. Pulled to length, there were seven including the groundwire. Line 1 was to be connected to the blue, orange, and black load wires. Line 2: red, yellow, brown. There was almost no slack in the line wire even when pulled taut. There was just barely enough length to connect everything without requiring new wire be spliced onto the old. The conduit ran straight to the wiring compartment and a hole had to be punched through the coverplate to fit the conduit, which covered the hole completely. Then the breaker was re-energized and the switch was turned on.
The fan began coming to speed, steadily rising in frequency from 15 to 60Hz, but the breaker tripped and the fan died and coasted slowly to a stop. The breaker tripping sounded like a gunshot and the killed motor’s fading hum was plangent and the plunge into ordinary silence was jarring. For one second I could remember you clear as day. I closed my eyes.
The most likely cause of the failure was excessive amp draw. The motor was rated to 21 FLA. Amp draw was taken by clamping the load wires with an ammeter and reenergizing the motor. The loadwire proved difficult to extricate from the linewire as the mass was tangled into the wirenut. The switch was thrown and the fan spun up and died a third time and during the spinup the measurements revealed peak amperage to be 28 amps prior to the trip event.
Therefore the belt required additional slackening and the fanshaft bearings potentially would need to be greased. Greasing was complicated as partial disassembly of the cage and nacelle were required in order to access the zerk fittings. The fan was fitted with a conical nacelle as if it were a propeller, a quizzical design choice which was purely ornamental: the nacelle was an aesthetic facade visible through the cage, and provided no apparent purpose. It sat suspended in the frame, fitted together with machine screws. After disassembly the zerk fittings were visible on the underside of the fanshaft and dripped red grease which pooled and slickened the uncoupled sleeves of the nacelle. The discharge was promptly cleaned and a greasegun was fixed to the fittings and two pumps of red CRC extreme-pressure grease were applied. Since the fan cage was open, belt tightness was further adjusted by loosening the tensioner and setting it to a less severe angle of deflection. Then the nacelle was remounted on the fancover and the cage was reinstalled. With the ammeter clamped on the naked wiring the fan was re-energized and measurements were taken. The fan spun to 60Hz and yielded less than 20 amps for the duration of its five minute runtime. Then the wiring compartment cover was replaced, and the motor cover bolted back atop the fan, and the tools collected and stowed in the pro pac and brought back to the shop.
Eric Angal’s work has appeared in Expat Press, Bruiser Magazine, Do Not Submit, BULL, Tragickal, Blood+Honey, and The Gorko Gazette. He is the author of the short story collection Defiler.