1971 Wizard box fan slow to start

[revvinkevin]

 

 

I acquired this 14" Wizard box fan from a friend when helping clear out part of her fathers estate.   I keep it at my office and use before it gets warm enough to turn on the A/C.  I've been using it close to a year now and quite often it's on "low" 8 hours a day.  

 

On occasion I will turn it on and the blades start turning very slowly.   After a while it slowly picks up speed and seems to be fine after that.   Yesterday I timed it.   From the time I turned it on "HI" until it reached full speed, a leisurely 3 minutes 10 seconds had passed.

 

A few weeks ago I took the fan home, disassembled it including the motor, cleaned it out (lint, etc), cleaned the rear bearing best I could, oiled it with Zoom-Spout and put it back together.   I wasn't able to remove the fan blades from the motor shaft, so I couldn't lubricate the front motor bearing.   It seemed to work much better for a few days, but is so far it's back to it's slow start up.

  

It's worth noting it hasn't done this every day I've had it.   It seems to start slow for a week or 2, then it's fine for a month or so.... so no real pattern here.

 

Note on the 2nd photo: after taking this fan home I noticed this writing on the bottom.   I guess her father was in the habit of "making notes" on when, where and for how much an item was bought for. 

 

Any thoughts on the slow start up?

 

Thanks,

Kevin

 

[artcurus]

The front motor bearing is the problem. Turn the fan blade side up, with the back of the motor toward the floor. In other words, after removing the grills, lay the fan on it's back, take a flashlight, and you should be able to see the armature of the motor behind the fan blades. Put a few drop of oil on the armature itself, and let flow down the armature. The better way to to do it, is that there actually should an oil port somewhere around that armature. It's marked as such.

This is probably a white motor about 3 inches tall, and about 6 inches across.

It's also imperatative that the motor be blown out, canned air works up to a point, air compressor works better, but it's looks like you've taken care of that.

There should be a nut that holds the the blade onto the shaft, it will be visible when the front grill is removed.

 

[revvinkevin]

 

 

Nope it's a smaller motor.   Also, there's a spring clamp holding the blades onto the motor shaft, no nut.

 

Thanks much for the info Artcurus!

 

[whirlaway]

Trash it!

Get you a nice early 50s or 40s Westinghouse fan,one that you can oil with ports on the front and back. I use a 1914 GE fan all spring and summer and a 1940s Westinghouse,one has cups to oil and the other has ports front and back on the motor,oil every month and they will last forever!!!!!

 

[artcurus]

revin,

Take the grills off and send some more pictures, especially of the front of the blade and where it connects to the shaft. That motor is actually not too bad.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Not sure if it's okay to bring up an old post. But I have the same fan, but it's a 1972. My motor is white Mcmillan and it has oil ports on each side, but I had to remove it to see them.

My blade would not come off after I took off the clip. I discovered the shaft had threads in it that the blade was screwed on to. I had to take the motor apart to get the blade unscrewed from the shaft.

It is a pretty good fan, I like the tilting stand especially. I sometimes set it on the floor and have it blowing up toward me when I'm on the computer. On low it puts out a good breeze without being too strong or noisy.