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I hear all these people saying they just rhow out their burnt up fans, or fans that start to chatter, or dont move. I use to work at a computer refurb place for 7 years and I would take these so called "dead" fans and rebuld them.
First thing is their is often a little sticker under the fan, that needs to be pealed up and sometimes there is a lil rubber blocker behind it. under the lil rubber/plastic piece, there is a plastic/metal retainer clip. Remove that and the whole fan slides apart. Take the individual pieces (ball bearing, bushings, shaft) and line them up in the order they go together. Clean all the used grease off of them, get some heavy duty gear oil(syn. 75W90 or something thicker, grease does NOT work too well) and place all the bushings/bearings in order on the shaft, coat with about 1 drop of gear oil and re-assemble. Yes, I'm this cheap!
BUT! The reason I do this is because I tested out a few of my rebuilt fans in customers systems(yes W/O my boss knowing) and never had a single return for fan noise, or dead fans. The syn. gear-oil also is easier on the motor than the grease is and will last alot longer than factory built fans(bushing fans). All the motors I tested out with grease always performed poorly, and after time stopped working. Damn I'm cheap :P
Thanks for the repair as a lot of us remove the label and put a drop of something on the shaft to get one moving again. So far as being cheap...$5 x 100 = most of a new kicka$$ rig.Good advice.
Happy Holidays,
Skip
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Yeah, we use to have this printer guy that saw what I was doing, and being the dumbass he was he would just take the sticker off, spray some WD40 in the fan and wonder why the machine came back a week later when the WD40 had evaporated.
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Appreciate the tip, Outlander! I tried putting a drip of WD-40 on one fan that was noisy, and about a week later it started again. So I had your experience also. Oh, and by the way, if you got a fan that is neon-lit, they ain't cheap! Thanks again.
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WD-40 is too corrosive, and does not work well with rubber. I am a trap shooter, and I use a small drop of teflon lubricant. The fan noise drops and never have a fan failure in 20 years.
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I've tried this too. I use a drop of "3 in 1" oil...but only to buy some time...I've never left a fan in place that I've "lubed up". It's held me over until getting to the parts store, though.
One question to you guys...what are you using to reseal the label?
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real_cool,
You recall the name of the teflon lube? I once had some I used on my 1911 .45's that had teflon suspended in it.jam,
I just peel the label back and add a drop of motor oil on a toothpick. If I'm careful and lucky, I don't get any on the original label adhesive and just push it down again.I have some old fans around I want to try Outlander's fix on. Chances are that his method of lubrication is better than a new fan gets at assembly.
Happy Holidays Folks,
Skip
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Hey, Skip, I got that Teflon oil you wanted to know about. Found it in a Heating & A.C. parts supply store. I use to have a complete 1946 American Flyer S gauge train set for the kids (a family heirloom) and used it to lube the tiny wheels and drive gear. Comes in a plastic tube with a needle applicator for exact placement.
Super Lube with Teflon
Synco Chemical Corp., Bohemia, N.Y.Maybe try Google search, and they can tell you the name of the nearest reseller.
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Thanks ranchhand...I have part of a tube configured just like that with a Chevron logo that is very old and I'm nearly out.Skip
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Wow. That kind of sucks. I need to replace my video card chipset fan, so I guess I have a couple of questions to throw out.
First off, I'm guessing this oil is probably only attainable through maybe auto stores such as Auto Zone, or Discount Auto Parts or something?
Second, since it's a graphics card that I have to deal with, what's the best static-free like surface I can lay it down on so I don't have too much to worry about? Just a wood desk?
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Well, I've just been suggested Super Lube. It's a turbine oil, machine oil. Used on speedometer cables and such. Would that be sufficient?
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OMG this is driving me mad...
I've got the fan off the sync. The only problem is now I'm stuck at that plastic ring that's holding the fan together... I've no idea how to get that off. Should I just put force on it and it should snap off? Or is breaking that thing not recommended?
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Nevermind! Got it. There seemed to have been nothing on the shaft but that plastic ring thingy, and what seemed to be a really really small and thin bushing, (though I swear it looks and feels like a really really tiny red o-ring). But what do I know. I'm about to apply that oil tomorrow. Hopefully, everything will work fine, and I didn't shock the crap out of my card.
Sorry to keep bumping this like this. But y'know... I really want my card to work. I'm not one to carry around $150 on me all the time for a graphics card whenever it dies ;P
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LOL!!!I never thought anyone else really did this besides me. Yeah, I have repaired Video card fans before, but you have to be VERY careful. As for the retainer keeping everything to gether, I use to use two icepicks to pull the retainer away from the shaft. The red bushings needs to go back in, if it doesnt go back in than you will have problems with noise and chatter.
Like I said, a good syn. gear oil works best, grease usually lowers th performance and causes the fan to stop after awhile. Don't use mineral oil (regular oil) it gets dirty with time and dries up.
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There are also two types of fans out there for computer needs.
The first is a bushing fan (not a bushing fan in the normal sense) it does not have a ball bearing, instead it has a single brass/copper sleve that the shaft goes through with 1 or two rubber/plastic bushings. They are used in lower RPM/smaller fans(ie. video card) and cheaper case fans.
The second type is the ball bearing fan, these fans have 1 or 2 ball bearings in them, and they tend to outlast the bushing fans. They are used in high RPM fans and CPU fans.
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"LOL!!!I never thought anyone else really did this besides me."
Hey dude, I ain't no rich b---tard. I'll take $3.00 worth of oil and experimentation over like a $30+ shipping fee any day. :) I REALLY appreciate you posting this.
It took me forever to get the thing off right. The oil that I have is called, "The original ZOOM SPOUT oiler". It doesn't give any freakin' specs on what type of oil it is, so let me just type up what the bottle says:
"Contains: highest quality turbine oil. This oil contains NO detergents! Paraffin base, non-gumming! Rust & oxidation inhibited! Withstands high temps! Ideal for use on: industrial equipment, electric motors from 1/3 HP to 5 HP, bearings, bushings, shafts, shop tools, and various kinds of mechanical linkages!"
Nowhere on the bottle did it specify the exact type of oil it is, but hey, it was worth a shot.
I got the fan working great this afternoon around 4pm CST. Spinning nice and fast, almost better than when it came out of the box, no noise. At all. Went to work at 5pm, got back at 12:30am, however, and I could hear lock up noises (high yet short-pitched squeals). I popped the hood, and checked. It was slowly locking back up. So I either A: Got the wrong type of oil or B: didn't put enough (I put one drop on a tooth pick and applied).
Disassembling this time was a snap. (No pun intended, and I'm so proud of myself, doing all this crap on my own. Wheehee!) I got it all off, and this time, I allowed the drop to coat from the end of the shaft, and let it drip down, helping to coat it all with the tooth pick. (btw yes, I did clean off whatever grease was left from before, both times).
Put everything back together, and voila, working great again. I'll let it run again and see what happens. If it ends up dying again, I think I'll just end up calling nVidia to see if they're nice enough to hand me a free fan with a dead warranty. I was about to get a new graphics card (GeForce FX 5200 128mb; all I can afford, though if anyone could specify, is that any good?), and planning on passing down my GeForce 2 Ti over to my girlfriend... but I guess I won't be able to do that if it's got a dead fan.
Just to note, my fan has no ball bearings whatsoever. Just the shaft and a tiny bushing.
I really suggest buying one of those $10 CompUSA "Computer Technician" kits. You get like two different type of tweaser tools that work WONDERS on taking the fan off the heat sync, and taking off that plastic ring that holds the fan together.
NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE!!! This is very important, as I almost had two heart attacks today: make sure you are working in an area where VERY TINY THINGS cannot fall into cracks or vents. And make sure you have a flashlight handy, because if either the bushing or the plastic ring flies out of your fingers, prepare to search!
Whee! I love experience!
Hey, Outlander, whether or not this technique ends up working 100% to its fullest, I totally appreciate you posting this up man. It really does help.
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Well, you need to first clean the bushing, sleve and shaft with WD40 or other cleaning substance to remove the old crap. Then you need to buy a "syn. gear oil" found at any advance auto parts.
"This oil contains NO detergents!"
" non-gumming!"This oil you have doesnt sound good since 1. It says non-detergents meaning it will gum up, or dry up. 2. It saying non-gumming, but yet it isnt a detergent oil?
Thee fan also just might be worn out, or you may have had a bushing that disintegrated.
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Heh. Well, so far, after the second try, it all seems to be going nice. I think it was that I didn't coat it correctly on my first try.
The bottle DOES say it's a solid turbine oil. And for the things it describes what it can be used for, I don't think a little fan should be too much for it...
Oh well. We'll see. This'll help on adding more info on what oils you should and shouldn't use for such a project. :)
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Hi ! I am from Agrnetina. helpppppppp !!!!
I have a P4 3gig with a motherboard Asus P4C800-e Deluxe. Was working at home and suddenly de cpu fan starts making a funy noise .... When i entered the bios setup i could see in the item "Monitoring Hardware" tha the cpu fan starts when booting and after a few seconds stops working and the CPU temperature gets very high. What can i do ? Thanks in advanced ...
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