vuzh | boring manly work post part two

less wordy more boring!

seriously, don't read this. it's pointless.
it's either write about this tonight or write about nothing.
you don't have to decide whether or not that's a good idea, i'm telling you... go away! it's boring.

second day of wrassling with the 300 pound beast.
after much handwringing about the large heavy nature of the motor, and its height and the confines of the work space, we had an epiphany along the lines of... "it's not getting itself down."

four of us and a come-along slowly, slowly tipped the beastly motor and dropped it efficiently onto the scissor lift in record time this morning.

more hand wringing about how to get the motor apart since the top end was impeded by the cooling fan... and we couldn't exert any pressure on it of any kind, since it was made of plastic... *sigh*
so we went through the other side of the motor, which had at first seemed like the hard way, but ended up being the easy way. fell right apart.

as a matter of fact, everything went swimmingly easily today.

upon pulling the caps off the motor we all had an astounded gawk at the insides of the housing, the arbor and coil caked with rippling stalactites and stalagmites of petrified, ancient lithium grease. most of the day was spent cleaning the shit off of everything. Cory took a big handful of the stuff and disappeared into the bathroom for twenty minutes, don't know what that was all about.

ahem.

the hero of the day was Simple Green degreaser! this wonder elixir was used by little brother

wrender to great effect. he also took care of all dangling-from-the-ceiling duties today. good man.

the opposite drive-end bearing came off easily with the little puller i had, then i had to go rent a larger puller for the other side, and the biggest one i could find in town didn't have long enough arms. so rather than hem and haw about that problem we made new fucking puller arms out of some iron bar i had over at the warehouse. jumping to action in this case might seem out of character for us, but fashioning stuff out of metal is what we do for a living, so it just seemed logical, and went extremely quickly. i was out finding / altering some iron pipe for banging the bearings back on while Dylan made the puller arms.

so both old bearings came off, the drive-end loosened with a sickening crack like a breaking bone!
everyone stopped and looked at each other waiting for someone's face to turn red and for them to start doing the pain dance while hissing curses in forgotten languages. it was a real anticlimax when instead of that, the bearing just began to move.

bang bang bang, i beat the fag bearings on with a hammer and iron pipe, ow ow ow, loud loud loud.

lots more wiping up old grease, compromised by THERMAL VISCOSITY BREAKDOWN (god i love saying that) and slapped the motor back together.

wimpy ass lift couldn't handle the motor and more than one person, so we had to use the ladder...
like savages! disgraceful.

a wee bit of grunting and lifting, and a lot of ratcheting with a come-along and the rebuilt motor was back up on the fan blower.

tomorrow we get to figure out how to reattach the blower to the shaft, and try to discover the secret of re-attaching the famed quick-release hub.

that and a little ductwork, and reaffixing the electrical and it's a job well done!
maintenance well performed! fags well mounted!