This video is brought to you by sportlin quality, integrity and tradition. This morning we have an exhaust fan, that's problematic. We had an emergency service call. Last night service technician came out found that the motor starter was tripped upon further investigation.

He found that one of the bearings are bad on the motor, so we reset it. It started up, but in talking with the customer, by the time we got here in traffic and everything and by the time we were going to have it repaired was going to be about 9 00 p.m and the customer wasn't going to be open really, but an Hour past that point, and so the customer opted to not have us repair it last night for labor reasons, because the call the fan went down around 4 p.m. By the time we got here in traffic, it was about 6 p.m, and then, by the time we could open a supply house and get a motor installed would have been eight to nine pm and they were like you know what they were gon na have their Employees sitting around doing nothing for four hours. They were just gon na, send them home, so they opted to go ahead and have us come back out first thing in the morning, so we went ahead and picked up the motor had it ready so we're here today.

So we're going to open this guy up, look inside and see what's going, okay, we got this guy opened up this guy right here clearly has bad bearings, so it's just got total play up there um motor itself, i'm not a huge fan of these, but anyways. It's all good we're going to get it unhooked here and then yeah swap out the motor all right, so we're doing a visual inspection and they need to do some cleaning here, because there is a lot of buildup in this fan really really bad and that's not Good for the fan for the operation for the speed, this guy definitely needs to be cleaned. Whenever replacing a motor i'm going to try to replace the wiring going to it. This one uses a cord so cord, so we're going to go ahead and replace that i carry this in my truck well at least right now i do i don't always have it, but i've been using it a lot lately.

So i've got a new section cut. We're going to put it all back together, wire it outside. So that way it's easier, and then we only have one connection left on the fan when we're ready to go so we're just assembling everything. We got two people here because we knew this was an urgent issue, so we're both tag teaming it trying to knock this thing out as fast as possible and get them operational.

When i am stripping this wire right, i cut the jacket. I actually use a knife. I got my leatherman right there and i cut the jacket about an inch right. You don't want to go too far because in order to cut the jacket you really got to get down and it oftentimes will go through and nick the wire right here.

It's hard for you guys to see, but that wire is nicked. I only do it for a small section and then i pull the rest off with my hand, understanding. I made it long enough that i'm going to cut this section off. Okay, because we don't want to leave a nicked wire right there, especially once you get into the higher voltage, you'll have voltage, jumping and shorting out.

You know it's just a pain in the butt, so took a little work. It was kind of tight. We had to sand the shaft sand, the inside edge of the pulley put some penetrating oil on there and uh. But what i want to point out is there's a key in there right it's going in the keyway and you have to make sure because this allen, the set screw, goes in at an angle.

So you got to make sure the key is fully in there. So oftentimes, i will pull it out and you can actually see the key in there. Okay, if the key wasn't underneath the allen, then we got to figure something out to make sure that it is because that's what holds the pulley on. So we got this guy on just be very careful, um and uh we're gon na set the pulley and then get everything else put back on all right.

This is what i'm talking about. I only strip it with a knife to right here, because you know that likely you're going to nick the wire other than that. This thing, when you just pull on it, it'll pull the rest off this new motor is a little bit different and what's happening. We we mounted it and the pulley is too high for that one now, there's nothing.

We can do to move this pulley down. The motor is already pretty much as low as it can go in the bracket that we want to put it. So what we're going to do is we're actually going to raise this pulley now in order to raise this pulley. This right here is a taper okay.

So we're going to take these three bolts out and there's actually new spots right here and we're gon na push. We're gon na separate them by putting it into here. Okay, so there's a set for tightening it on and then there's a set for loosening it. So we're gon na put the bolts in here thread them down.

It's gon na separate the two we'll pull the key out, we'll move everything up and then set it down tight. We separated the two it dropped down. Now we're going to get the key out by using a set of dikes there. You go nice and even and then we got to clean that key up now.

Okay, so we're gon na take that key and run it on some sandpaper on a flat surface and clean our grooves up. Now we can kind of twist it apart and separate. The two lift it up and go from there all right. We got the motor where we want it.

We got belts on there. We looked at our alignment. Our alignment is where we want it, but then what we did because of the taper lock. We went just a hair down because, as we tighten the taper lock on, it's actually going to pull up so we got it lined up right about where we want.

It's aligned, everything's good. It looks nice and neat and um. Now, what we're going to do is evenly tighten down on these ones. Now i put it back in the other holes so that way it's into the threaded section on the pulley itself and it's just open on the taper.

So if you look right here, there's threads on the taper, that's to separate the pulley, and then you look right here. These ones don't have any threads okay, so we have it where we wanted it, and then we lowered it just a little bit and then now we're going to evenly tighten these so we're going to go quarter turn quarter, turn quarter, turn quarter, turn quarter, turn quarter. Turn you don't want to do boom boom boom boom boom because it won't align itself all right before we make final adjustments and tighten everything up. We need to check to see if the exhaust vent is going in the right direction.

Now this is a utility fan, so it's really easy to tell it should be spinning this way and shooting the air out and up so we just turn it on just bump. It really quick and we are going in the wrong direction. So that's: okay! We're gon na switch it i'll pull the cover back off, we'll switch the rotation just by interchanging. Any two leads: this does not have a vfd or anything and then we'll finish, tightening everything up.

All right. We are running and the fan does have a vibration to it. That vibration could be part of the reason why the bearings had failed on the previous one um. They need to clean this fan.

All that grease buildup inside there is what's causing it to vibrate, because they're probably not doing regular pm on the cleaning service. It's very important that they have someone. You know service, like us service the fan, but then they have professional grease cleaning companies that need to clean these things on a regular basis, especially with this place. They have a char broiler before below here, so it just builds up a lot of stuff, so we're letting it run it's corrected running in the right direction.

But you want to let it run for about 10 minutes and then we're going to turn it off and then we're going to double check the tightness and the alignment on that pulley right there, all right when we're all done. We have to come down to the motor starter, which is the overload check the setting for the overload protection and make sure we were running under current, and we are because we're allowed to run 9.2 amps we're at 5 amps. So we're good to go all right. We've been having a lot of these uh exhaust fans for this particular customer, starting to have issues with the motors and honestly they're all about the same age.

I'd like to see a little more life out of these things, but these customers they don't they they do kind of a regular maintenance, but it's not as often as i'd like to see them doing. It. We've been very vigilant to catch problems before they become major ones, but occasionally things like this one slip through the cracks, so the previous maintenance at this location was done. It was actually it had been four months since we have been on location to do a maintenance.

So they don't do it that regularly and obviously this is what they get. You know we try to explain to them. Hey proper, routine maintenance is going to go a long way because we could potentially catch these problems before you have to shut down the restaurant. You know and when these restaurants have to shut down because of this location, they can't operate because they only have two exhaust fans.

They have no redundancy built into their hood system. One of them goes to their friars. One of them goes to their char broiler and uh. They they just can't operate.

So you know it is what it is. I i try to explain things to them, but when you're dealing with corporations, you know i'm not really dealing with the decision maker. I'm just dealing with the person that intercepts my communications and passes it on to the powers that be so. You know it only goes so far when you give them personal opinions and advice and stuff.

So but it's all about taking your time, you know fixing the problem uh, bringing up other things like hey, you're, gon na run into a problem. Again, we need to get this fan cleaned asap. Now i don't do grease cleaning there's specialized companies that do that. It's not as simple as just taking a pressure washer to it, or anything like that.

Technically, you're not supposed to run this stuff down the drain, you're supposed to clean it up and contain it, uh dispose of it appropriately because they don't want the the chemicals and different things that they use to go into the sewers. Ironically, i have seen that some of them do just run it down the drain, but anyways it's just a whole thing. So that's not our business. We don't get involved in that we're just there to try to keep the customer operational, make sure the equipment's going good.

Okay, so paying attention to pulley alignment paying attention to proper belt tension. You know things that can cause bearings to fail is belt tension. If people are over tightening belts, you know that can lead to severe issues, so you've got to make sure that things are properly tightened, make sure you're using the appropriate tools and or methods to make sure that you're following manufacturer's specifications. You know always lean on the manufacturers.

I recently mentioned in another video, where i worked on the almost identical exhaust fan at another location that you know i like to use the uh, the the ax or the bx, the notched style belts, because they have better heat. Dissipation, they tend to last a lot longer, and on top of that, in this situation, like i did in a previous video, i always leave spare belts. Okay. So if i'm changing the belts first off, if you have a double belt system - and you have a belt - that's failed, but then the other one's okay.

Personally, i change both the belts at the same time that way they're the same age, tension them accordingly, and if you tension belts properly, they can last a long time right if they're, if they're, not running, loose, loose belts right, so you can have big problems. In my opinion, if you over tighten a belt you're going to ruin, bearings okay, that's that's a plain and simple thing: if you leave belts loose, if customers are not doing routine maintenance and they're running loose belts on their exhaust fans when they start up, if they Squeal and the belts slip and different things like that that, in my opinion, causes uh premature pulley damage and causes the pulleys to wear out. Okay, if you continually maintain your equipment, in my opinion, the pulleys last a lot longer, they don't fail as much regardless, though, when i'm changing out a motor, i'm gon na go ahead and change out a pulley too. In this situation, i had just done an almost identical repair at another location, so i was literally able to go to the supply house and say give me that same everything.

You know, and it was just like boom - knock it out: okay, um but yeah. So, just taking your time understanding what's going on and also understanding when there's vibrations and different things like that that we need to address them. So i brought to the customer's attention this exhaust fan is vibrating. Here's the deal, there's here's what i told them.

I said you need to get the grease cleaning company out here. They need to clean this exhaust fan. Then i need to reinspect. If the vibration has not solved itself, the solution is going to be we're going to put in a shaft a new wheel and a new drive pulley okay, and we're going to replace that whole section, because the motor will be fine.

But we want to get ahead of those problems, especially on these restaurants, that you know or these critical exhaust fans. You know, because you don't want that vibration leading to other problems, and it will. It will quickly or quickly degrade that fan and just cause some serious issues running the fans with extreme amounts of build up too. In my experience causes more damage causes the wheels to go out of balance, causes other bearings to fail, and it just it's just a catastrophic situation.

It's just one thing due to just snowballs and comes bigger and bigger, so always address vibrations. Make sure you understand when they're normal when they're not you know a lot of what i do is from experience, and so i oftentimes have to catch myself when i'm working with an apprentice or someone else, and i'm educating them on how to work on these things. Because it almost comes second nature to me, you know i can walk up. I again, i know people are going to criticize me for this, but, like i can tension a belt and say this is the proper tension without using a tension tool.

Okay, i can align things within reason without using laser alignment levels. Now i realize that when you get into scientific stuff and heavy industrial stuff, when you've got you know, sometimes you have to get the fancy alignment stuff out, but for the most part, there's methods using your eyes using reference points and different things like that. I can tell you, when belts are pretty darn close to being aligned properly when pulleys are lined up. It's all about looking at things and using reference points and finding fixed items behind you that you can use as a reference point when you're looking at adjustment levels and different things like that.

That may or may not make sense to you guys. But it's just the method that i do things, and that is something that is very hard to teach. So that's where i'm constantly trying to better myself and or better the way that i'm teaching to other people - and i realize that there's a lot of things that i do that are old school methods that, while they work for me and i figured out how to Make them work, i probably need to get better at using actual tension tools and actual alignment tools, and things like that when it comes to all the nature of what i do, i have ways that i've gotten by doing things it may or may not be the Right way, but it's always worked for me, you know so anyways. I really really appreciate you guys making it to the end.

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But the simplest way is literally watch the videos from beginning to end without skipping through anything, and it doesn't cost you a single thing say, except for a few minutes of your time. If you're interested in purchasing any tools check out truetechtools.com, they have a great selection of hvacr tools. I have an offer code set up with them. Big picture.

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