Rant: My furnace motor seized up mid-pour last Wednesday

I was running a small aluminum pour out in the shop behind my house, maybe 30 pounds of metal, and the furnace motor just quit with a grinding noise. The burner lost air and started sputtering, so I had to pull the crucible out fast with tongs before the metal solidified. Turns out the fan bearing froze after I skipped greasing it for 6 months. Has anyone else had a furnace fail right when you needed it most?

3 comments

3 Comments

webb.hannah8d ago

Honestly, I'm kinda on the opposite side here. If you knew the bearing was dry for six months, that's not a surprise failure, that's just ignoring basic maintenance. A quick grease gun hit every few weeks would have cost you maybe two minutes and saved the whole headache. Ngl, I've seen guys run their furnaces for years with barely a look at the fan motor and it's always the ones who skip the little stuff that end up digging crucibles out of a cold pot.

jamiesullivan8d ago

Been there with a Dayton motor myself. Grabbed a cheap grease gun from the hardware store and made it a habit to hit those fittings every time I changed the furnace filter. That little routine turned a six month motor into one that ran six years without a peep. The key is using the right grease too - standard lithium grease works fine for most furnace motors, just don't overdo it or you'll blow the seals. A couple pumps is plenty, and you'll hear the difference in how quiet the motor runs after. That two minute job pays for itself about fifty times over compared to pulling a seized motor out of a hot furnace.

henry_anderson548d ago

Burned through a cheap $40 Dayton motor that way once. Started hitting the fittings every month with a handheld grease gun after that and the next one ran almost a decade before I swapped it out for an upgrade.