Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Air blower shaking, very shaking...

I have an Goodman electric furnace # AR32-1 http://www.guysmith.net/PDF/ar.pdf and the blower inside is shaking to a point that I MUST do something.

Is it possible to calibrate it myself, and tips. how to do it?

Thanks!

Sounds like your blower wheel got out of balance or the motor bearings are going. (More unlikely would be that the entire mount of the blower assembly is coming detached....but worth a check. Usually it is secured in place by a screw at each corner of the blower. (These screws secure it solid to the metal of the furnace and by removing these two screws you can slide out the entire blower/motor assembly)

Before making an attempt to pull the blower motor, check these things:

With the furnace positively shut off!, see what happens when you try to spin the blower wheel softly? Does it want to continue to freely spin after you let go? (which it should) Does it appear to spin balanced (as it should), or is it rather eccentric (not good)?

See if you can see if there are oiling ports. You should see one of the two at the end of the motor, where the motor sticks out. There is a bearing at the end of the motor. The oiling port will be either ontop or within about 30 degrees of the top, and sometimes there will be either a metal or a yellow plastic cap over it. Sometimes there is just a hole. Sometimes they have tubes that feed both the front and rear motor bearing from the one accessible bearing so you don't have to pull the blower out of the furnace to get at the other bearing.

With the furnace still off, and with a flashlight and possibly a mirror, see if perhaps something got into the vanes or there is a lot of dust build up. (If the furnace had a history of not having the furnace filter changed frequently enough, this could have caused problems like this.)

Also, check the motor bearings: Pull outward or push inward on the blower wheel shaft to eliminate end play (end play is fine). Now, with it in or out, try to wiggle the blower wheel up and down, and side to side. If you feel knocking/play, and you are not confusing this with end play...then the motor bearings are shot.

Get back with us here with any revealing discoveries.

Thank you Daveboy.

I'll check all that next week when I'll have a little free time.

I'll be back with news and/or results. :)

Fta,

That will be good. It is always nice on forums like these to get a response from the person you are trying to help, so one doesn't think they are just wasting their time.

Regarding that motor end play business I talked about: The reason it is important to hold the shaft one way or the other is that if you are not aware of this end play (slop), when someone goes to wiggle the blower/shaft to feel if there is slop in the bearing, they may erroneously THINK there is slop, when there might NOT be at all, simply because when the person thought they were rocking it from side to side, they were also allowing the shaft to slip forward and back and heard/felt THAT instead.

Another thing to check for is a foreign object in the blower wheel. In my years of service mice were the most common but some were very intresting.

Sorry for my silence. It's just because I haven't done anything new. I work 80 hours/week and I just didn't had the time.

As soon as I'll do something, I'll give you some news. Promise.

Thanks again!

80 hrs a week ! Good luck and let us know what you find.