Buffalo Forge 300 Blower Repair - help with fan shaft spacers?

[Yuppiejr]

Hi,

Hopefully a relatively simple question... I'm trying to replace spacers of an unknown organic material that turned into a light brown liquid that poured out of my blower when I opened it up to figure out why it sounded like something had come loose and was rattling around inside.  Turns out the rattling was the bearing on the right side of the fan shaft having come off of it's groove on the fan shaft... which presumably was being shimmed/held in place by the washers in question.

For those who haven't had to access and service the fan shaft on this style of blower, you first have to remove the fan cover and then the fan itself which is held to the shaft by a single square head set screw.  Mine required a squirt of WD40 but popped off with a light pry from a screwdriver.  You can then gently pry the retaining caps off of both ends to expose the bearings and, presumably, the washers I need to replace if they haven't liquefied.

When you pull the shaft through the body of the blower gearbox, the bearing on the "right" (photographed) side will pop off of a groove on the shaft and allow the rest of the assembly to pull freely out the back of the assembly.  The bearing on the "left" (opposite the fan) side simply slides back and forth and is not retained.  I did notice the ends of the cut gears on the shaft seem slightly rough and may have been grinding away at the previous washer/spacer for a number of years before it fully disintegrated.  The shaft is .475" in diameter.

When the blower operates, the shaft seems to "float" and ride on the two bearings... until, as in my case, the travel front to back is so great (due to loss of the shim/spacers) that the fan side bearing pops off of it's groove and the whole thing comes to a halt.  I assume that the shims were in place to limit travel of the floating bearing (left side of the photo) which could be accessed by removing the two nuts and spacer at the end of the fan shaft.  

Anyone happen to have a parts diagram for a Buffalo Forge 300 blower?  Otherwise is anyone else that has rebuilt a Buffalo 300 blower able to post a photo of the same fan shaft on their blower indicating where the spacers that are missing on mine need to be located, and perhaps, provide a description of the material they are made of?   I figured out that the closest standard size washer that would fit the shaft (with some slop) is an M12 unless I open up some 7/16ths with my drill press, but I'm not sure what material or what position they should be in.  I'm going to pick a few options up to play with (brass, stainless and nylon/rubber or deriln if I can find it) but would love to skip some of the guesswork if anyone cares to share.  Google is not a great resource as there simply isn't much out there on these guys versus the smaller 200 or more popular Champion models.

Thanks! - J

 

* Just found this gem of a post, assuming the 200/300 use a similar assembly I think I will start by shimming between the bearing and cut gears on the left side of the shaft (opposite where the fan attaches).  

 

 

 

[Yuppiejr]

Found the solution, while not perfect a single copper 7/16" flat washer ("Handi-Pack" Part 87718, UPC 738287877182) from my local Menards did the trick.  The outer diameter of the washer is slightly smaller than the bearings on the fan shaft.

Same basic logic as the 200 repair in the thread linked above, I'll show the part disassembled and displayed in order alongside the fan shaft, and then again assembled for future reference if anyone has this problem with their Buffalo 300 and wants a relatively quick fix.  

The 7/16's fibre washers from the same maker were smaller than the copper and would not fit the shaft, stainless flat washers were too large in outer diameter.  A copper washer on the opposite side of the bearing (closer to the gear) locked the unit up tight (must be hitting the gear above)... and a second of the same copper washer next to the one shown did not allow me to fully lock the bearing on the opposite side when reinstalling it in the gearbox.  Some really thin shims of sheet copper might help take a bit more play out of it, but given my blower run  I did not end up bothering with the 12mm

 

 

.. note that the pictures flipped the image, the orientation changed 180 degrees thanks to the photo importer...