In the interest of contributing to the forum in what little way I can, I thought I’d show some pictures of my carb fan rebuild last night. I did a little poking around on the forum and it seemed like posting some pics of the rebuild might be of general interest.
A little back story to why I did this thought first:
My FJ60 is the first carbureted engine I’ve owned and I didn’t bother reading a page of the owner’s manual… So of course I wonder why I have to crank the starter forever during a hot start… So, that problem got fixed with a simple behavioral adjustment, but in my searches online I started reading about the carb fan, and I realized mine wasn’t running. Turns out it was just unplugged but it runs, sort of. Except it sounds like I’m beating a sheep after I kill the engine. So, I kind of wanted to do something about that.
Anyway, I figured I’d at least try taking it apart just to see what could be done, and I discovered that you can completely break down the DC motor and clean it from the ground up, so I did. It was a pretty easy job with one hitch I thought I’d warn folks about if you want to clean it yourself. The brushes sit right at the base of the output shaft and pop out when you remove the housing. The way I was able to get the whole thing back together after cleaning was to load the brushes and keep them in place with some dental floss tied in a slipknot, which you can just pull off right before you close the housing back up.
Anyways, my rig has 316K imles and the brushes still had a ton of material left on them. The commutator was pretty badly eaten through which you can see, so I don’t know how much life is left in the motor, but I thought I’d mention that it’s a pretty robust part and could probably be serviced, which I mention because it seemed like there were a fair number of folks looking for them in the parts section. If mine goes south any time soon I'll probably source another motor that meets spec, if I do I'l be sure to post a part number, unless someone here has already done it.
A little back story to why I did this thought first:
My FJ60 is the first carbureted engine I’ve owned and I didn’t bother reading a page of the owner’s manual… So of course I wonder why I have to crank the starter forever during a hot start… So, that problem got fixed with a simple behavioral adjustment, but in my searches online I started reading about the carb fan, and I realized mine wasn’t running. Turns out it was just unplugged but it runs, sort of. Except it sounds like I’m beating a sheep after I kill the engine. So, I kind of wanted to do something about that.
Anyway, I figured I’d at least try taking it apart just to see what could be done, and I discovered that you can completely break down the DC motor and clean it from the ground up, so I did. It was a pretty easy job with one hitch I thought I’d warn folks about if you want to clean it yourself. The brushes sit right at the base of the output shaft and pop out when you remove the housing. The way I was able to get the whole thing back together after cleaning was to load the brushes and keep them in place with some dental floss tied in a slipknot, which you can just pull off right before you close the housing back up.
Anyways, my rig has 316K imles and the brushes still had a ton of material left on them. The commutator was pretty badly eaten through which you can see, so I don’t know how much life is left in the motor, but I thought I’d mention that it’s a pretty robust part and could probably be serviced, which I mention because it seemed like there were a fair number of folks looking for them in the parts section. If mine goes south any time soon I'll probably source another motor that meets spec, if I do I'l be sure to post a part number, unless someone here has already done it.
