Thanks for being so understanding guys!
soooooo... there IS an update. We were gone all day yesterday, visited my sister, and arrived late. After the kids went to bed, I needed a little time to unwind, and headed to the shed to have a look at that busted fan. A 10 inch diameter, Caravel Rotron fan, made in USA. It made me sad to see this thrown in the garbage.
The motor was not seized, the propeller was turning, but not smoothly. Measured the winding with the ohmmeter, about 90 ohms. This is a reasonable value, not shorted, and not open circuit either. The fan did not turn when hooked on 120V, or 240V. It's a 220V AC fan, but it should turn, just slower, on 120V AC.
At this point I had no expectations of fixing it, but it's fun doing a post mortem too. On to taking it apart, but I was stumped as to how to disassemble it. After many minutes I realized there were two screws/nuts under the label on the back.
Once those nuts were undone the propeller and motor assembly came out of the outer case. But here I got stuck even more. Could find no way of taking the propeller off the shaft.
You know how you don't want to force something and break it, only to find later there was a neat way of disassembly. After enough time staring at it I decided to force the propeller off the shaft. With older equipment I always expect that it's maintainable, and therefore there must be a way to disassemble it neatly. I was surprised to see that the plastic propeller was molded onto the shaft. You will see here on the top of the shaft, that mushroom shape. The propeller has a skirt that goes all around the motor assembly, so it must be taken off to get to the motor. The middle interior of the propeller skirt seems to have been molded around that mushroom, making it impossible to take it off without breaking the plastic, which I did. More on this later.
Once the propeller was taken off, I could take apart the motor, which had four clips holding the top plate. I found two wheel bearings, one the top, and one at the bottom. They were not seized, but turned hard and rough. Some WD40 got them to rotate easily and I got the idea of putting the motor back together just tentatively, and see if it now works on 120V. To my surprise it worked. Amazing, the "thermal protection" that this motor has (inside the winding) seems to work by not allowing the winding to fry if the motor is mechanically seized. Great design! OK, now I realized that the the "heart" of the motor is fine, and all I need is to replace the bearings and fix the propeller somehow.
But it seems the rotor assembly is pressed together, so the bottom wheel bearing would be easy to pull off the shaft, but for the top one to come off I would have to pull the rotor off the shaft, which I am reluctant to do. The bearing at the top can't simply come up the shaft, because of that mushroom shape on the shaft, which seems to be part of the shaft, and not pressed on to it. Being already quite late, but still not ready to stop fooling around, I took the seal off the bearings, washed them well with brake cleaner, blowed them dry, and packed them with some good quality grease.
Standard 608 bearing.
Bearings cleaned.
Repacked.
If the bearings give up on me later, I may as well take the risk and pull them off and replace them, as they are standard 608 wheel bearings.
Here's a short test of the motor on 120V, with the bearings re-packed. At first they wouldn't turn, probably until the grease got spread around. Maybe it's my imagination, but they don't sound smooth like new bearings.
And now, how to fix the plastic propeller. To be continued...