OK, get it? This is about fixing up a 70's era Nutone/Scovill range hood.
The impetus for this was the recent discussion about the horrors of fumes from gas stoves, and the need to have an effective range hood to suck all that nastiness up to the birds on the roof.
This house was built in 1941. The kitchen was remodeled in the 70's. At that time they tore down a wall between a bedroom and the kitchen, added another bedroom to a master suite addition on the back of the house, turned the bedroom that was next to the kitchen into a family room, and put a cooking peninsula between the kitchen and family room. That peninsula has just a cooktop, and over that cooktop a rather large Nutone/Scovill hood. It measures 36" wide and 30" deep. And it's in Harvest Gold, which helps me date when the kitchen was remodeled. Unfortunately all the tags that might have had model numbers for the hood have faded or been scrubbed away.
It's a nice enough hood, except it's a bit noisy. There's this loud hum it puts out, which I really don't like. I've tried to address this problem before, about 15 years ago, and dropped the motor with its dual squirrel cage fans. It's held in place by a wire bail affair. I tried to add weather stripping to where the motor/fan assembly meets the rest of the hood, I recall this quieted it down for a bit but it got noisy again.
So this weekend I dropped the motor/fan assembly again. Somehow I think it was a LOT easier 15 years ago, LOL. But I managed. First thing I did was to run the motor out of the hood. The noise is not coming from the motor! It's pretty damn quiet. Apparently the sheet metal of the big Nutone hood is picking up some vibration from the motor and turning it into that hum.
While I had the motor out, I decided it was time to clean the squirrel cage fans. Yikes! Easier said than done. First I tried soaking them in a LOT of Dawn (after removing them from the motor, of course). That didn't do much. Then I tried wire brushing each fan blad (there must be about 25 blades per fan). That didn't get everything. Next up I stuck them in the dishwasher along with the aluminum mesh grease filters. Well, that helped a little, but there was still grunge caked on each fan blade. But all the soaking and the DW action loosened up the grunge enough that I was able to scrape most of it off with a table knife.
Also cleaned the nautilus shaped fan housings - more grunge, but easier to get at than the fan blades. I didn't put the housings in the DW because they have stickers that detail how to reassemble them back onto the motor bracket. I got their innards clean enough with a scotch brite pad.
Once the motor was reunited with the fans and the fan housing, tested it again for sound. Whisper quiet. Hmm.
Getting it all back into the hood was another ordeal. Again, it seemed easier 15 years ago. I removed most of the ineffective weather stripping from the hood where the fan assembly meets it. Was going to add some split rubber tubing (automotive gas tubing, I think, it was in my shop) to all points of contact, but these kept falling off when I went to install the motor, and finally I figured that wasn't going to fly. I was able to leave one bit of tubing on a bracket that touches the hood sheet metal up high, and also added some split tubing to the two points where the bail meets the squirrel cage housings.
Making everything even more wonderful was that one of the studs that holds the base pan under the whole motor/fan/filter assembly decided to separate from the sheet metal. Took me a couple hours to round up the right mix of soldering gun, solder, acid flux, files, steel wool, and about five tries to re-attach the stud. I think this took me about three hours. Finally used some good old fashioned acid-core lead/tin solder and some acid flux from the workshop, and a BOL soldering gun I've had for decades (not the expensive variable one that suitable for electronic work). That finally did the trick.
Along the way I realized the exterior of the Nutone hood was in dire need of cleaning - mainly because I was gripping the outside of thing to steady myself as I worked on the innards. I found a bottle of a product called Wype that the previous owners had left behind. That stuff rocks. Need to find more. Just googled it. Apparently it's antique. Probably 30 years old or more. I *know* there's a bottle of it somewhere around here... I just can't locate it. But I had enough in the spray bottle to clean the Nutone exterior.
Finally got it all together (except for putting away the tools and cleaners - that's for tomorrow. The hood still hums, but it seems less of hum than before. I also marked with red pencil a spot on the variable speed control where there's a bit less hum but still plenty of air flow.
The impetus for this was the recent discussion about the horrors of fumes from gas stoves, and the need to have an effective range hood to suck all that nastiness up to the birds on the roof.
This house was built in 1941. The kitchen was remodeled in the 70's. At that time they tore down a wall between a bedroom and the kitchen, added another bedroom to a master suite addition on the back of the house, turned the bedroom that was next to the kitchen into a family room, and put a cooking peninsula between the kitchen and family room. That peninsula has just a cooktop, and over that cooktop a rather large Nutone/Scovill hood. It measures 36" wide and 30" deep. And it's in Harvest Gold, which helps me date when the kitchen was remodeled. Unfortunately all the tags that might have had model numbers for the hood have faded or been scrubbed away.
It's a nice enough hood, except it's a bit noisy. There's this loud hum it puts out, which I really don't like. I've tried to address this problem before, about 15 years ago, and dropped the motor with its dual squirrel cage fans. It's held in place by a wire bail affair. I tried to add weather stripping to where the motor/fan assembly meets the rest of the hood, I recall this quieted it down for a bit but it got noisy again.
So this weekend I dropped the motor/fan assembly again. Somehow I think it was a LOT easier 15 years ago, LOL. But I managed. First thing I did was to run the motor out of the hood. The noise is not coming from the motor! It's pretty damn quiet. Apparently the sheet metal of the big Nutone hood is picking up some vibration from the motor and turning it into that hum.
While I had the motor out, I decided it was time to clean the squirrel cage fans. Yikes! Easier said than done. First I tried soaking them in a LOT of Dawn (after removing them from the motor, of course). That didn't do much. Then I tried wire brushing each fan blad (there must be about 25 blades per fan). That didn't get everything. Next up I stuck them in the dishwasher along with the aluminum mesh grease filters. Well, that helped a little, but there was still grunge caked on each fan blade. But all the soaking and the DW action loosened up the grunge enough that I was able to scrape most of it off with a table knife.
Also cleaned the nautilus shaped fan housings - more grunge, but easier to get at than the fan blades. I didn't put the housings in the DW because they have stickers that detail how to reassemble them back onto the motor bracket. I got their innards clean enough with a scotch brite pad.
Once the motor was reunited with the fans and the fan housing, tested it again for sound. Whisper quiet. Hmm.
Getting it all back into the hood was another ordeal. Again, it seemed easier 15 years ago. I removed most of the ineffective weather stripping from the hood where the fan assembly meets it. Was going to add some split rubber tubing (automotive gas tubing, I think, it was in my shop) to all points of contact, but these kept falling off when I went to install the motor, and finally I figured that wasn't going to fly. I was able to leave one bit of tubing on a bracket that touches the hood sheet metal up high, and also added some split tubing to the two points where the bail meets the squirrel cage housings.
Making everything even more wonderful was that one of the studs that holds the base pan under the whole motor/fan/filter assembly decided to separate from the sheet metal. Took me a couple hours to round up the right mix of soldering gun, solder, acid flux, files, steel wool, and about five tries to re-attach the stud. I think this took me about three hours. Finally used some good old fashioned acid-core lead/tin solder and some acid flux from the workshop, and a BOL soldering gun I've had for decades (not the expensive variable one that suitable for electronic work). That finally did the trick.
Along the way I realized the exterior of the Nutone hood was in dire need of cleaning - mainly because I was gripping the outside of thing to steady myself as I worked on the innards. I found a bottle of a product called Wype that the previous owners had left behind. That stuff rocks. Need to find more. Just googled it. Apparently it's antique. Probably 30 years old or more. I *know* there's a bottle of it somewhere around here... I just can't locate it. But I had enough in the spray bottle to clean the Nutone exterior.
Finally got it all together (except for putting away the tools and cleaners - that's for tomorrow. The hood still hums, but it seems less of hum than before. I also marked with red pencil a spot on the variable speed control where there's a bit less hum but still plenty of air flow.
