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Old 04-18-19, 10:45 AM   #1
Daox
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Default Came home to a cold house the other day

This past weekend, we got home from church and the house was 66F. I checked the thermostat, and it was set to 70F like it should be. So, I knew something was amiss. I went downstairs and looked at the furnace to see what was going on. I started by opening it up and resetting the power to it. It cycled on and started doing its startup procedure. I heard the inducer fan start buzzing, but it wouldn't spin up. So, I smacked it with my hand. It started spinning up, but I could hear a rubbing / scraping noise from it. I let it finish the heating cycle to get the house up to temperature, and then I started taking it apart.

This is what I started with. My furnace was installed in the early 90s. I'm quite happy its still kicking.





Next up, I removed the inducer fan. No problems yet, no bits of fan loose in the housing (I've seen that before). I did notice that as I move the fan around, it would scrape, then stop scraping depending on the orientation of the fan.





So, I took apart the fan housing. I found scrape marks, and some discoloration in the plastic where it had gotten quite warm. But, nothing seemed broken.





Here is the other half of the housing. Same thing here, but the discoloration is much more noticeable.





So, I removed the fan from the motor shaft and looked at it. The back side of the fan was completely fine. Nothing on the fan was broken at all. Besides the scrape marks, it was good. So, I put it back on the motor shaft. I pushed it all the way on and noticed it went on a decent amount farther than where it was when I took it apart... Taa daa, found the problem. I guess after 25-30 years, the fan blade just slowly worked its way down the motor shaft.

I reassembled the whole thing and fired it up. No noises or scraping, yay! I love simple fixes.

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