Last night the swamp cooler started making a squeeking sound and slowing down and speeding up. Wife gets excited and tells me something is wrong with the cooler like I hadn't noticed. I told her I would just turn it off and get up there in the morning and tighten the belt and this morning I did so. Put up the extension ladder, got the right wrench, and a long screw driver for a pry bar ( doesn't take much leverage to raise the motor) and up the ladder I went. Oh, hooray, the belt is loose alright but not because it's stretched. The pivot bolt on the motor side of the motor mount was broken off flush with the squirrel cage letting the mount droop. OK, another trip down and back up the ladder to get a cordless drill, spring powered center punch. drill bit, tap and tap wrench, bolt and washer. I had a sneaky idea I had replaced thhttps://www.go2gbo.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=2055930070is bolt with a stainless one as I has replaced both adjusting bolts years ago with stainless to keep them from rusting in place. Sure enough I had and apparently it was made with 316 stainless as I only managed to get deep enough with a new new DeWalt bullet bit to make the end of the bolt shiny. Getting nowhere with that I stopped and dug around in my hat bag to find my southern engineering hat and put it on. Since the mount only needs something to pivot on and is captured by the adjustment bolt I drilled a hole just below the mount frame in the sheet metal of the squirrel cage. Another trip down and up the ladder for a !/4" sheet metal screw and I'm back in business. It worked just as good as the original pivot bolt. The cooler is running and the wife is happy which makes me happy.
You were up on a roof walking around? Your tuff, I wouldn't even attempt that anymore. We were thinking about a swamp cooler.But we lucked out and the insurance put in a new central air. O&S it's almost unbelievable what our power bill was. The entire month of July was only $132 for the entire house, and it's all electric.
What ever those HVAC company's
are doing it works. If you can deal with that loud jet engine noise lol.
The old one would have been easily $250 or more. But let's see what it does this winter, that's the big test. SPS said it shouldn't make any difference.
If vibration is the issue that is shearing off 316 SST bolts, how long will it be before you are back up there with a wallowed out sheet metal hole? Sheet metal is notorious for appearing strong. It will let you down every day and twice on Sunday.
I mighta known a real engineer would find fault with my fix.
OK. it doesn't viberate. The motor and fan bearings are good. Why the bolt broke is beyond me and frankly I don't really care why it did. If it does turn loose the worst thing that can happen is the motor drops down in the same place it was after the bolt broke and the belt starts slipping again. How am I doing so far? Meet your criteria yet? If not think about this. It's been up there for over twenty years and despite my scrapping, brushing, and painting every spring the pan is about rusted out and it's going to swamp cooler heaven this fall when it gets shut down for winter and I'll have a brand spankin' new one next spring. That's going to fix everything for a time----until the pan coating lets go and the rusts starts.
If the new one lasts twenty years and I'm still around I'll be in an old folks home most likely and won't give a hoot what happens to it
Three trips up there this morning, Argent. Hooray for me, I'm tuff. Hope I don't have to go up there anymore until it's time to shut it down for the winter.
You betcha and thank you for the back handed complement. I cruise this site looking for all sorts of industrial accidents waiting for a place to happen, then interject just enough questions to irritate the devil out of the OP, so the Southern Engineer in me can come out to play. I am much better providing fixer-upper specifications when there is an investigative report on the problem - with pictures, a site visit to kick the tires, an estimate of the owner's cost tolerance, who is responsible for maintenance (was any done?), the last known bar sighting of the BIL that installed the former fix, and the quickest route out of town.
Failing these and higher order solutions run the gambit from "Who would have thunk it?" to "There's not a chance in #e!! of that surviving the summer!", but you have to pay extra for one of those. Otherwise, chewing gum, bailing wire, and spit are the watchwords for a quality fix.
Are you sure that was 316 steel?
I bought some square head stainless steel screws for installing a deck and did not want to have to deal with rust stain or stripped philoips type heads when removing.
One out of four snapped going in and another large number snapped when I had to replace some rotted boards not that many years later.
I found that stainless is not cheap but that is one area where you dam# sure get what you pay.
I recently rebuilt an arbor with stainless bolts but I paid a LOT for each bolt and had to special order them.
I only studied Physics in high school and college. I didn't master it. This Bumble don't bounce and I am allergic to gravity my friend. Better to find a younger set of knees that can actually climb a straight ladder and I will keep my engineering comments to myself.
Dang it, you offered to help and I though I might get out of a few trips up the ladder this fall. :tango_face_grin: I'm sure that when I start dismantling the thing this fall I'll have forgotten some tool or multiple tools that I'll need because nothing ever works as planned and I'll have to make more than one trip up and down the ladder. At least it's easy to get the thing down. Disconnect the water and wiring, lift it off the duct, and throw it off the roof.
The one and only time I fell off a ladder I didn't bounce either and it took months to get back to being my fiesty self. That was over twenty years ago and it was only a 4' step ladder and no, I wasn't on the top step.
I was hanging Christmas lights on the gutters from the roof over the 2nd story. Peering over the edge where the house pad was elevated some 6-feet above water level in the pond it looked (and felt) every bit of the 30+ feet to the ground. I could feel gravity pulling me off of that roof. Right then I QUIT. Never again on a roof...except when it started to leak and that's another #$%&^! story. I would be very glad to hand you tools, assist in ways that don't require ladder or roof work, and duck when the swamp cooler is ejected from the roof, with PREJUDICE.
Ha, I was putting lights on our front yard Christmas tree, a blue spruce, when I took my fall. Conclusion: Putting up Christmas lights is dangerous work. That little shenaggin finished my outside Christmas light hanging.
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