Genocache : Personal fan restore for my Land Rover 109

This project started in Oct of 2021. I had 2 fans of unknown manufacture, trying a few online searches I found they were in 1950's+ cars and Pullman rail cars.

As you can see they were in bad shape from age, mostly causing the rubber blades to perish. Out of 6 blades only 1 was intact. I took it apart to try to see if I could fix it. At this point I tried powering them up with jumper wires. The one without a switch was dead, The one with a switch would turn on.

Back online I found a manufacturer of replacement blades; La Favorite Industries, https://www.lafavorite.com/fan-blades I ordered a 6 pack.

While awaiting the blades I cleaned up the motor housings and the mounting bases, removing the red lead primer and sanding out the corrosion where I could. Lastly adding a clear coat of paint.

When they came in I discovered that they were not an exact fit, being larger and with a different lip on the inserted base.

Next I traced and cut down one of the blades.

Then came the hard part, fitting the oversized base into the slot in the hub. No kidding it was hard!

Once I knew I could do it I went ahead and cut out the other 5 blades and put them in.

This is when I tried to power them up and get them to move air around. One of them has no switch so it was unknown if it worked. The other one didn't turn. I was disappointed and frustrated. I tried to find a spare parts supplier, only the blade guy comes up. I can't even find the manufacturer of the motors.

There is a guy in Scotts Valley who does vehicle electrics. I was going to take them to him and see if I can find a switch or a plug.

Which brings me up to yesterday some 4 years later.......I've been getting rid of things in a Spring cleaning/yard sale almost frenzy. In the process I dug out the fans and went to reestablish where the fuck I was with them.

Starting with "do they run?" I messed around trying to find/make a plug. Finally I came up with an old set of clamps from some sort of tester. I discovered that the female end on a crimp blade would slide on the pins for the motor and be fairly tight. I crimped a couple of those on and took the whole shebang to the 109.

Zip, Nada, nothing. I tried the one without a switch by putting a screwdriver and jumping the contacts. Same result.

At this point I figured that the switchless one could be my guinea pig so I started to take it apart. First thing I noticed was that a coil was not connected at one end. I could only get the armature to spin a bit when it was out a little. I thought I had pulled it out of the brushes as it would not go back in. Then I HAD to unsolder the wires from the power and pull the guts out. Here I saw that the rear sits in a bearing and the brushes were in the front. The bearing had gotten cockeyed whilst I was playing around with it. Fixing the bearing and housing screws back in place I centered the bearing and plop the armature went back in. So I resoldered everything and put it back together as much as I could. There are 3 solid rivets that seem to hold the front bearing in place which I don't have.

Wanting to see if the resoldering worked I took the motor back to the 109 and again jumped the switch. Lo and behold the motor turned! I put the blades back on to see if it was turning in the right direction. Nada.....wtf? took blades off, it turned! blades on, no worky!?

It would turn by hand with the blades on. Looking closely I could see the rubber blade base was rubbing on the motor housing. The motor not strong enough to overcome the friction.

Out came the dremel tool and after some sanding and fitting I got the fit right and the fan moved air!