My Ox Got Stuck In The Mire....

So this morning around 5:30 I could hear a noise that sounded really out of the ordinary. Like a loud buzz, but more like a doorbell when someone pushes in but doesn't let go of the button. Kind of a "Nnnnggggggghhhh" sound.

I climbed out of bed, and all of a sudden I could smell something burning & thought, "Uh oh, that doesn't smell right".

It was coming from the direction of the furnace and I had a pretty good idea what it might be so I hauled butt downstairs to check the furnace and, sure enough, that darn Ox had really gotten stuck in the mud today.

That loud noise I was hearing was the sound of my furnace motor straining to turn...but not going anywhere. You know, like an electric motor when it's turned on but something gets jammed in it.....not good. And the smell it was emitting smelled like something electrical overheating too. (my sniffer knows electrical smells pretty good from my youth; all those pulling apart electrical devices & such).

So, I killed the power switch to the furnace and at 5:30 in the morning started pulling the furnace apart (so much fun I tell ya!)

With the doors off, I reached in & turned the fan blades, "Yep! It turns, but it's kind of stiff." I pushed in the cut-off switch, turned the power back on & waited for the fan to try to come back on...sure enough! "Nnnnnggggghhhhh"

So, down the power went. This time I reached in & spun the fan and then kicked on the power so that the fan was spinning when the motor came on. Yep! We got spinning & no noise....

Ugh! This could only mean one thing. Something BAD was wrong with the furnace blower motor.

So, I got my tools & started disassembling the thing. My gosh! Furnaces are nasty! Dirt, dust, lint, you name it, gets stuck up in there....

I pulled it out, hauled the whole assembly out to the garage & kicked on the air compressor & blew the crap out of it. Dust went EVERYWEHERE!!!

Well, I hauled it back in, put it back in the furnace and fired it up & it still wouldn't turn. "CRAP! Now I gotta buy a new furnace motor! That ain't gonna be cheap!"....and, there aren't any furnace motor retailers open on Sunday either.

So, went to church with my mind conjuring up things it could be, asked an electrician in the ward where I'd find a blower motor as I wasn't going to pay some HVAC place gobs of money to come & tell me what I already knew (that the motor was probably bad) and that I'd have to "wait until Monday to get a new motor" anyway.

So, when I got home I figured, "Hey, what have I got to lose? I'm gonna pull the sucker apart & see what happened".

So, out came the fan assembly & slowly but surely I extracted the motor (more dust & dirt). I'd read on the front of the assembly something about oiling the motor ever 2-5 years and to my knowledge it hadn't ever been oiled since we've lived here (going on 10 years). "Hmmm....I wonder if it just needs to be oiled"

So I popped the caps off the ends of the motor & sure enough, both bearings were dry as a bone. I oiled them up with some lubricating oil (by the way, 10W 30 won't work..it's gotta be 20 W Lube Oil..which I just happened to have laying around), did the other side, let it sit for about 10 minutes and noticed the motor now moved much easier.

"Hmmmm.....Well, it's worth a shot!" I threw it all back together, hooked up the wires, and hit the switch. WHIRRRRRR!!!!! The fan came to life! Yahoo!!!!

So, I got that stupid ox pulled out of the mud and the house is warm again...and I didn't have to spend a single cent! BONUS!!!

The moral of the story? If it's been a while since you've oiled your furnace motor....you might want to do it before you end up pulling it apart (or paying someone to do it for you) at 6:00 AM on a Sunday morning when it's cold outside.

I'm just glad I grew up with a dad that taught me how to fix stuff and for my love of pulling everything and anything mechanical or electrical apart at a young age (there's a whole other story behind that one....involves a vacuum cleaner at the age of 3). All of that experience just helped us keep the house warm again!