BWW Project #37 Guest Bathroom vent fan

 BWW Project #37: Guest Bathroom Vent Fan

The ceiling vent fan in the guest bathroom off the entryway, didn't work from the day we bought it.  I detected a slight hum, so I taped off the switch until I could get around to it.  The ceiling is high and the fan assembly is covered by a vent cover, which comes off with two screws.

The fan motor plugs into a socket, so this plug can be removed and three screws loosened on the hanging cowl to twist and let the motor and fan drop out.  This helps because now I was able to take the whole thing downstairs to my pristine workshop and tear it apart.

The fan blade comes off with an Allen wrench, allowing access to two long bolts that travel through the motor and through the mounting cowl.  Two nuts and the cowl comes off.  Now two more nuts and the long bolts can be removed from the motor.

A few light taps with a sharp chisel separate the two halves of the motor cover and that can be taken open revealing the coils, which happily looked good, and the commutator, which comes out.

Now that it is all in pieces, one can put lithium grease in the proper cups and on the spindles of the commutator.  One can also clean everything real good.  Putting it back together is not difficult either, but when I repaced it in the socket and tightened everything up, the whole works extended down a quarter inch from the ceiling and the grill wouldn't go back on.  After wrestling with this problem for quite a while, I examined the inside of the grill and it looks like the grill might have been forced on, pushing everything up a little.  

This will not do, and it may have contributed to the breakdown in the first place.  The motor is a Universal Electric Company item, probably decades old.  I looked online and the company was based in Michigan but no longer exists.  

My solution is going to be to simply buy a grill cover that hangs down, or adjust the one I have by inventing sides somehow to stand it off 1/4 inch.  

The motor hums like a sewing machine, which is what really counts.  I am not certain how long this lube job will hold up, but it is not difficult to remove this thing and if I have to do it again in a couple of years, so be it.

Easier than installing a new unit from scratch.