Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - Oil burner starts intermitently

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sinnops
11-06-07, 08:13 AM
First, a little back story. I had my furnace service and cleaned in September. In the process, a leak developed after the service which turned out to probably be a loose connection somewhere inside the burner assembly. This cause the whole unit to be flooded with oil. When I had the service man come back, the found that the motor was full of oil as well, a few oz at least. He put a whole bunch of oil absorbent powder all over the place to absorb the oil and the furnace seemed to work fine for a while.

Then last week the furnace would not start, i pushed the reset button and it started. Ive pretty much had to hit the reset button every day now, usualy in the morning and sometimes at night, mostly if it had not been on for a few hours. When it is used the most, at night, it seems to run fine. On a few occasions I have had to hit the thermal reset button on the motor as well and pull up the transformer and give the motor a spin before it would start. Sometimes the motor would feel very hot as well if i hit the reset button a few times. I also noticed when the transformer was removed, the blower chamber was 'dusty', it looks like it pulled in some of the oil absorbent dust into there.

Now, im pretty sure that the motor is having some issue, could all that oil and dust cause the motor to fail? Is there anyway to clean it out? Otherwise, I was thinking about going to the HVAC supply center to get a new motor. Of couse the furnace is 20 years old and they dont have the same exact one but hopefly it can be matched.

Any idea would be much appreciated.

Furnace: Duomatic Olson HTL100b
Motor: Emerson SD55GYJTK-5871
Thermostat - Honeywell programmable (dont remember the model)

THanks !!


sinnops
11-06-07, 04:27 PM
Ok, I pulled the motor assembly apart and it was rather dirt, filled with caked on gunk from the powder. Put it back together, now the motor will not turn at all, it just gets very hot. Just to test it, i pulled the motor out, turned on the furnace to see if it would spin at all. Nope. So I used a screwdrive to get it started and after a few pushes, it started up. So now the motor needs a kickstart?! Im guessing this thing is toast, but PLEASE let me know if anything else on the system could be casuing that? Ideas please!

Thanks!