I’ve had these steel fans over a decade and I maintain them with a little grease each summer. This summer in particular, I think the grease in the can is degrading and I’ve needed to do this maintenance three times this year so far. Not wanting to futz with this another time this year, I tried a new lubricant: baby oil (the mineral oil base kind of baby oil).
Works great and now my living room smells ever so slightly of baby.
It was surprisingly easy, and as long as you dont drop all the washers/spacers, there are really fewer parts than I pictured.
Getting the front cover off was a challenge due to all the years of gunk on the shaft, but since I was going to degrease it anyway, I used Dawn/hot water and scrubbed all the mess off and it slid out. That front shaft bearing with the rubbery feeling seal was unexpected also.
The video I liked is suuuuuper long (37 min) but most is the fan body disassembly and it had lots of helpful comments and tips for anyone interested.
Did you knock the shaft after reassembly? The guy showed tapping it from a few sides after reassembly to help it settle into, I’m assuming the old wear pattern, and spin more freely, and I felt that did help. I’m assuming it would eventually vibrate back into place on its own, but if a motor had more uneven wear, that might make a bigger difference, but it felt like a handy bonus tip.
I tried replacing my busted parts with washers I had on hand, but the nylon spacer that kept the rotor and shaft centered was in half a dozen pieces, and if the fan wasn’t perfectly vertical it still made grinding noise. I leave the fan run 24/7 usually, so it isn’t worth worrying about starting a fire or something, so I called it quits as an academic exercise in electric motor maintenance.
I’m glad you were able to repair yours! I was raised really frugally, and I feel bad scrapping so much material, but I don’t want to take a chance with unsupervised electronics at this point in my life.