The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Squirrel Cage part number

I need a part number for a replacement squirrel cage for an AD Airflow heater. I decided to replace the motor with 12 volt unit. Maybe I should have left it alone. The set screw rounded out after heating and soaking and... I can barely reach it with a drill bit, but it is bigger than... suffice it to say that I need a new cage. I found no results in a search. Thank you in advance for the help!

Hy 8trackdude, try an appropriate size EZ out to remove the set screw, hope that helps.

I rarely have luck with an easy out.
Very carefully welding on broken screws and bolts and grab the weld with vice grips almost always works in my experience.

I’m not aware of an off the shelf replacement fan.

Grigg,
I have a question about your technique. Why doesn't the bolt fuse or weld to the surrounding material when you tack weld on to it? Does that ever happen?

https://www.classicparts.com/1947-54-Heater-Box-Round-Style/productinfo/68-206/

It is worth also checking Jim Carter and Chevs of the 40s.

The trick is to avoid that, which isn't hard. If the heat is concentrated on the screw or bolt that is what melts and what you add your filler metal to it. If the arc wanders off to the larger part then yes, you can weld the two together.
Large bolts you can do this with a stick welder or MIG. Some Specialty Rods for Stick welding
Smaller you can try MIG in short pulses. Place a washer over the end to use as a shield to avoid welding the surrounding metal.

All sizes, and particularly tiny screws, TIG welding gives the control and accuracy necessary, both the adjustable amps on the fly, and pin point precision.
TIG also allows you to reach down in a hole, even bolts broken off well below the surface can be extracted.

Sometimes I keep the arc on the part well after I've built up the metal I need to grab, further heating the screw/bolt.
Sounds counter intuitive, hot bolt expands so wouldn't it be harder to remove?? except I think expanding crushes the rust or otherwise makes room and brakes free, right away it shrinks back some making a little room to move.
The concentrated heat on the screw also brakes free Loctite without having to heat the entire part, if that's a factor.

If it doesn't work on the first try, try again, and again after that, the more heat cycles help.

Grigg

Heat always helps, dissolving the rust, even able to hand remove after suitable cooling.

Ed

I was hoping to not have to give the details, but...

Everything is rusted up pretty tight. Several attempts were made at soaking with PB Blaster. After that, the torch came out, alternating between heat and quench with PB Blaster. Absolutely nothing has happened, except that the screw has rounded off. Now, I want to drill. The only problem, the size of bit I want to use isn't long enough to make it all of the way through the cage. The smallest bit I have that will actually reach all of the way in is big enough to completely obliterate the screw. I thought, no problem. I'll drill and retap the hole. The problem comes in the fact that, while drilling through the vanes of the cage, my hole has become elongated, terribly out of round. At this point, to me, it appears to be unsalvagable. I found a cage on eBay. It was supposed to be for some newer GM car, but the dimensions were right. Just as long as the rotation is right. If it works out, I will post part numbers, etc.

The welding stuff sounds very interesting, but... The welder is 15 miles away at the farm. Also, I am not a competent welder. There would be no way possible for me to weld something that small in such a confined area. I would have just made the problem that much worse.

Thanks for the ideas, though.

Grigg,
what I was thinking about was the fact that the welding current goes through both sides of the threads to get to the bolt. I was wondering why sometimes that material doesn't fuse together.

Similar but different.
The working "current" while welding is an arc, with heat, melting the metal.
Same current flows through the welding leads, ground clamp, and so on: no arc, not much heat, no melting.
The bolt in the hole is already doing a good enough job conducting that current (similar to the welding leads) it doesn't arc between the threads and weld them together, at least not in my experience.

I don't know if this will help, but I just replaced the motor and blower wheel on my 1947 Harrison heater. The motor is VDO part number PM354, and the wheel (what I call the fan) was VDO part number BW9311. The only problem I had was that the center of the wheel was raised, and there wasn't enough of the shaft sticking up to solidly attach the fan. I ended up using a big socket and flattening out the center of the fan a bit (about 1/4"), then it worked fine. It took a few tries to get it even so that the fan wasn't tilted on the shaft, but it worked. There might be a wheel that has a flat bottom, but I couldn't find one. And the wheel is about 1/4" smaller in diameter than the original, but that doesn't seem to affect the air flow.

Tim

Perfect! Thank you, Tim. Just what I was looking for. If the one I ordered doesn't work, that may be the next step.

What part of Central MO are you from?

I live near Lake of the Ozarks, on 40 acres in the middle of the woods. Hoping to get some warmer weather soon so I can get back to working on my truck.

Tim

Here is what I have learned from this experience. The original wheel is approximately 5-1/2" dia X 2-1/2" wide, counterclockwise rotation. Starting with Tim's tip above, I was able to find a wheel a bit closer in size. Murray number BW9302 is 5-1/4" dia X 2-7/16" wide, counterclockwise rotation and it was available locally. Like Tim mentioned, there is a bit of offset on the the back side of the wheel. I used a large socket (Ford 4wd lock out hub socket) and about 12 hits with a 5 pound hammer to adjust the offset. It worked perfectly. Now, I have a brand new blower wheel to go along with my band new motor.

Gotta love percussive maintenance.

This is good information.

Does anyone know if these parts are common (blower motor and fan) between the Airflow and Freshair heaters?

Thanks.

The motor may be, but the fan is not. The recirculating heater uses a bladed fan, not a squirrel cage.

If using a torch, and it doesn't come loose, it was not hot enough to 'melt' the rust.

One has to get the right kind of squirrel to tell which fan to get.

Ed

Deve at Devestechnet.com has an article on putting that new VDO354 motor inside the old 6 volt motor and you can not tell the difference. I have done it to my heater.

I only have a small propane torch. It usually gets hot enough, but I guess not this time.

Unfortunately, Ed, I ate the squirrel before he told me.

I read Deve's article, and pretty much used his instructions on fixing up the switch and resistors. As far as encasing the new motor in the old, I didn't feel that it was important enough to spend the time working that out. I don't have a problem with the way the new one looks in place.