Now I did it!

[Ivan the Butcher]

This week was the first Social Security payment, and I declared myself fully retired!

At 0330 Friday night the furnace motor burned out! Even though I haven't changed a furnace motor since before 2006 (when we sold the apartment complex) I'm not paying some heating and cooling company time and a half to come out on a Saturday and replace the motor! I figure 1 to 2 hours of work, and at most $100 for a new motor from Granger's and I'll be done by 1100.

First thing, pull the old motor. I kill the power and start removing access panels from the furnace. As I get inside the furnace, it gets ridiculously difficult to get the screws out! This Bryant Furnace is about 25 years old, and never been accessed before and the screws from the factory are askew and cockeyed! It tool over 20 minutes to be ready to pull the squirrel cage! Double what it should! As I pull the first of the two mounting screws, it is difficult to get a 5/16" socket on the screw head from any possible angle. In fact as I looked at the second screw there is no way for the factory to use an air wrench or screw gun on the screw! I had to use a 5/16" Combination wench to turn it 1/6 rotation at a time! Another 25 minutes! Then the fan safety switch is in the way, 3 more minutes!

With the cage out on the basement floor I pull the motor. There is no separate mounting bracket! It has 3 "Wings" welded to the motor body! So much for a cheap replacement motor! Factory Bryant part it is. Off to the most expensive parts store I ever encountered!

I get there on hour before they close, and they refuse to sell me the part! I bought parts the with cash for my crew all the time until 2012. But they say they never did that. I had to call an appliance repair shop pay them retail by credit card and the text a purchase order to the parts dealer. I'm at 3.5 hours! And close to $300 for a $65 motor!

Get the new motor inside the squirrel cage. 1/2 hour. I took almost 2 hours to get the cage hung, and reverse wire everything. Laying on the concrete floor, trying to lift the motor left handed and start screws right handed. Then the reverse for the other side of the motor cage!,

Yes, it only took six frustrating hours to do an one hour job! It did fire right up on the first try. Otherwise I probably would have cried for a half hour or so.

I know I too old to do anything, but if I find the designer in a dark alley.... I get another half dozen old maintenance men to hold him down while use a screw gun to fasten his clothes on! I'm too old for this!

Ivan


So how have the simple fixes in your life been going!

 

[lihpster]

Yep. Gotta love those jobs where the obstacles pop up like rakes dotted about the ground, with no warning when one will jump up and smack you in the face. As it does you stagger into the next one, and so on.




Also, designers deserve a spot next to animal abusers in Hell.

 

[MSgt G]

But it's done right! ��

 

[twodog max]

The small community I grew up in had a car repair shop run by one old crusty man. He was a friend because i spent a lot of time and money in those days keeping my old clunkers running.
His favorite saying was quit school and get rich designing cars in Detroit, as he claimed cars had to have been designed by grade school dropouts not by anyone very smart.

 

[Narragansett]

Every 20 minute job is just one broken bolt away from a 3 day
ordeal.

 

[jeffrefrig]

I'm sorry, but I just had to laugh! Yeah, Bryant & Carrier pretty much all OEM part$. I'm dreading the time if I ever have to change my blower motor. It's a Trane, but they mount the circuit board right in front of the motor housing, not counting another relay and xfmr I had to add for the humidifier, plus a few extra wires for the air purifier and UV lamp I added. I'm with you on the engineering. I believe every service tech from industrial to residential should be allowed to go to engineering 101 class and slap the smile off someone's face for future junk he's gonna design. Especially the ductless split systems. Enjoy your retirement! I have been.

 

[steelslaver]

The small community I grew up in had a car repair shop run by one old crusty man. He was a friend because i spent a lot of time and money in those days keeping my old clunkers running.
His favorite saying was quit school and get rich designing cars in Detroit, as he claimed cars had to have been designed by grade school dropouts not by anyone very smart.

Actually they were designed by smart people. But, their goal was not to design them to be easy to work on or cheap to repair. Quite the opposite. Their first order of business is to make them easy and cheap to assemble. Contrary to popular belief front wheel drive cars were not made for better drivability, but simple assembly. The motor, trans axle and steering is all assembled on a sub frame then what ever body is simply bolted to that sub assembly, mini van, sedan whatever. The fact that the alternator ends up down against the passenger side fire wall and you need to remove a cross member, part of the exhaust and some steering linkage to change it out is not a problem. It is a plus. It forces most owner to go to a dealership with the special tools to have it replaced. More money. If they had put it on top the motor any guy with a set of wrenches could fo it in a hour, instead of having to pay $1200 for shop rates and $150 for the alternator that sells for $85 at O'Rielly's.

When you have to remove the cab off a pickup using a specialist lifting device to work on the motor that is not a design accident or a engineers stupidity. LOL That was done to keep the customer at the mercy of the company.

A Chevy, Ford, whatever dealership can not stock and sell a new model until they send a "technician" to the company school and buy all the "specialty tools" for that model.

Anyone with a set of SAE wrenches, sockets and a screw driver could tear a 65 Chevy down to the last nut and put it back together, Assembly required a torque wrench and ring compressor. A timing light, dwell meter and vacuum gauge was nice but not necessary.

While I like injection and electronic ignitions, Swapping parts on most rigs nowadays is a major pain. I drive early 2000 era Lincoln Town cars. Rear wheel drive and I can get at the starter, alternator, radiator etc if I need to with out dissembling the whole front end of the car. I got 24.5 mpg riding in comfort on my way to the job I am on and am getting close to 20mpg running to and from the plant restaurants etc.

The OPs furnace manufacture used the same business model.

 

[Tom S.]

Back in the 80's we had a new furnace put in along with adding air conditioning which was long overdue. The furnace has been problematic almost since day one and it was rare to go two years without a service call. Service calls were almost always centered around the igniters. One time the guy mentioned the small blower motor that clears out the combustion chamber was going bad and I decided I had enough with the service calls. By now I too was retired and although I knew nothing about furnaces, I figured I would learn.

The small motor was easy to replace and cost about a third the quoted price. Less than a year later, the furnace wouldn't fire up. The symptoms were consistent with previous episodes so I cleaned everything out and put in new igniters but to no avail. I gave up and called in the repair place who told me I needed a new motherboard - to the tune of over $800.

I thanked the technician, paid the $80 service call and went Googling. I found the mother board for $250. It arrived 3 days later (thankfully the furnace cooperated enough to get me by). I took a couple of pictures of the wiring for the old motherboard so I would know where the wires connected back to and went to work. About an hour later the new board was in but it didn't work right. I called the place I bought the board from and within two minutes had the thing going. The tech I was speaking to knew immediately what the problem was: two wires had to be reversed on the new board from where they had mounted on the old board.

Here's the kicker to this story. I mentioned I had to have the furnace serviced yearly or every two years at a maximum but since I replaced the motherboard over 4 years ago, I have had ZERO problems with it! I know I just jinxed myself, but I have to wonder if the motherboard was problematic all along and they were treating the symptoms rather than the root cause.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

I'm with you on the engineering. I believe every service tech from industrial to residential should be allowed to go to engineering 101 class and slap the smile off someone's face for future junk he's gonna design. Especially the ductless split systems. Enjoy your retirement! I have been.

My youngest son has a BS in Industrial Design. He had a job as Maintenance Chief for Community College in New Jersey and now over sees maintenance for a chain of banks. He told me he liked the way you could use colorful language repairing things and everyone understood.

Ivan

 

[NYlakesider]

Well Ivan now that your fully retired this week you just passed the test to go to the next level.

You will know it when you get there!

 

[Onomea]

Ivan, what was the logic they gave you at the parts store for not selling the motor to you directly? That doesn't make any sense at all.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

Ivan, what was the logic they gave you at the parts store for not selling the motor to you directly? That doesn't make any sense at all.

No real explanation or logic. The way it all went down, I would estimate that it is a "Kick-Back" kind of deal. Even though we were all in Columbus, the parent organization is in Youngstown and rhymes with coffiea or BOB!

Ivan

 

[Grayfox]

The three prime corollaries of Murphy's law:
1. Nothing is as easy as it looks.
2. Everything takes longer than you expect.
3. And of course, if anything can go wrong......

 

[Golddollar]

This week was the first Social Security payment, and I declared myself fully retired!

Ivan

Congratulations on your retirement. You will find yourself so busy you'll wonder how you had time to work. The first thing you need to do is get a new calendar, as now there will be 6 Saturdays and 1 Sunday in every week.

 

[Golddollar]

Actually they were designed by smart people. But, their goal was not to design them to be easy to work on or cheap to repair.

While I like injection and electronic ignitions, Swapping parts on most rigs nowadays is a major pain.

That's for sure. If it's more complicated than field stripping a 1911 or Browning High Power, I'm lost.

Back when I was driving 1970s and 1980s vintage cars, when I got another car just to get the maintenance down to ground zero I would change out the sparkplugs, plug wires,distributor cap, rotor, coil and a solenoid that all the electric current went through. All on top and accessable standing up using hand tools. I wasn't a great mechanic but knowing about these things got me out of at least one scrape.

 

[Rustyt1953]

Congrats Ivan.

 

[Tom S.]

The three prime corollaries of Murphy's law:
1. Nothing is as easy as it looks.
2. Everything takes longer than you expect.
3. And of course, if anything can go wrong......

My favorite is "Murphy was an optimist."

 

[NFrameFred]

Reminds me of the threads where everyone stakes out their territory with preferences on motor vehicle brands. In a nod to common sense with the way internet forums are, I will make this generic instead of throwing gasoline on an old fire by naming brand names . . . .

There is one American made brand that is a favorite of many folks who always seem to get good service from their buggy. Every one I ever owned was a lemon and I was never one of those fortunate enough to get good service.

Even back in the day where I did 80-90% of my own maintenance I used to tell people the engineers that designed those cars were sadists who hated guys who worked on their own cars. Although (almost) a slight exaggeration I used to tell people that ********* seemed to require loosening the motor mounts to be able to change out a headlight.

As someone with an engineering background, I constantly shake my head over the way some mechanical contrivances are put together to save the manufacturers a penny and a half for each of a million/gazillion units instead of spending that penny and a half to make their widget easy and economical to repair. I deduce that once the "planned obsolescence" policy of theft became public knowledge that this was the fall back position to guarantee it was easier/cheaper to go buy a new one than to go down to the local hardware/parts store and fix it yourself.

We currently see the results in this country where manufacturing is lost to overseas countries that pay subsistence wages and can hold us hostage when "the supply chain breaks down".

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

The three prime corollaries of Murphy's law:
1. Nothing is as easy as it looks.
2. Everything takes longer than you expect.
3. And of course, if anything can go wrong......

My favorite of the Murphy's laws was:

DON'T MESS WITH MRS. MURPHY! when ask "Wife or Mother?" I'd respond: You'd be a fool to try and find out!

Ivan

 

[LVSteve]

Industry view of the OP is that they are the end user, and by definition are not qualified to touch anything. Close the toolbox, back away, and call the qualified tech. We have an industry to support here, stop trying to disrupt it.

I'm pretty certain I'm on the local HVAC company's hitlist because I had the nerve to change a failed run cap last year on an A/C unit.

 

[steelslaver]

My RV trailer's furnace quit working. I read around and found out that the fan was not coming on and the fan must start before it will turn on the gas and hit the igniters. Fix is a new control board. I found and bought one for about $100 and installed it Which fixed the problem. Being a curious guy and having spend a year in college studying electronics and several more years fixing copy machines I traced the fan motor wire connector to a small relay on the original board., had the number right on top of it. I ordered another relay from an electronics supply for about $12. Little time with a solder sucker and then an iron and replaced it. Then I replaced the new board in the furnace with it and as it works fine, the new board is in a drawer as a back up.

I have no doubt the RV service center would have nailed me for hundreds. If you have done one you could change the board again in a hour max.

 

[SMSgt]

For every $50 I save repairing something by myself, it costs $300 for the repairman to fix the damage.

 

[LVSteve]

For every $50 I save repairing something by myself, it costs $300 for the repairman to fix the damage.

What's that thing about a man knowing his limits?

 

[old bear]

Just up dated Info,

So how have the simple fixes in your life been going!

Just fine. I always step back and call the Guy. Then I pop a cold one, and watch a Pro work

Under the heading of being careful of what you say. My garbage disposal just went belly up Plumber set to arrive on the 27th, at 0730 hrs

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

Under the heading of being careful of what you say. My garbage disposal just went belly up Plumber set to arrive on the 27th, at 0730 hrs

I estimate I replaced or installed new well over 2000 disposals! When I was still active, a 20 to 30 minute job. I had 25-year veteran maintenance men that could do it in 3 hours flat! I carried a ISE Badger 1 in my truck, usually 2 on Mondays! The 1970's models just rotted apart around 1995-2005. You would go to unstick the thing and it would twist in half about one inch below the sink mount. The replacements had a thermo-plastic body in that weak area, if they don't burn out the motor, they should be good for 50 years!

Ivan

 

[lihpster]

I estimate I replaced or installed new well over 2000 disposals! When I was still active, a 20 to 30 minute job. I had 25-year veteran maintenance men that could do it in 3 hours flat!

I've only replaced 3. Not a plumber, not a trained maintenance man. Just a redneck with a toolbox. Longest it took me was about 45 minutes.

 

[Derosa]

Why repair it? Just sell the place and move to Texas. Everyone else is doing it. Then start a new career here - we need legal skilled tradesmen.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

Why repair it? Just sell the place and move to Texas. Everyone else is doing it. Then start a new career here - we need legal skilled tradesmen.

I love it in Texas! But I don't speak enough Spanish to order pizza! My oldest lived in Beeville for 6 or 8 years, my grandkids went to a little Catholic school, I saw my granddaughter's 3rd grade class picture, she was the only BLONDE!
I just got all the kids and grandkids within 500 miles of me, I'm not interested in moving another 800-900 miles away.

Ivan

 

[oink]

The alternator on my high mileage 2005 Hyundai Tucson died. The mechanic wanted 8 to 9 hundred bucks to replace it. He advised the cost was because the book called for removal of the engine to change to alternator. Probably more than the car is worth. Youtube rescued me. I found out I could remove the right front wheel and some other small parts and then with some difficulty get the alternator off. So i ordered an OEM alternator off Rock Auto for about $100 and changed it out. Admittedly it was a bit of a pain but I did it with the use of only a few french words and not too much time. So I'm still driving the piece of junk with about 200k.

 

[LVSteve]

The alternator on my high mileage 2005 Hyundai Tucson died. The mechanic wanted 8 to 9 hundred bucks to replace it. He advised the cost was because the book called for removal of the engine to change to alternator. Probably more than the car is worth. Youtube rescued me. I found out I could remove the right front wheel and some other small parts and then with some difficulty get the alternator off. So i ordered an OEM alternator off Rock Auto for about $100 and changed it out. Admittedly it was a bit of a pain but I did it with the use of only a few french words and not too much time. So I'm still driving the piece of junk with about 200k.

If that's been your only serious failure in 18 years and 200k miles, I'd hardly call it junk.