Oil/plastic smell from fan, want to clean/oil motor

franklin.macintosh · 2013-06-26T05:39:27+00:00

Over the years, the fans I buy are getting worse and worse smelling. Some will smell like machine oil, others will smell heavily like plastic, and so me will smell like diesel (of course it's not diesel, but that's the closes t thing I can compare it to). These smells do not fade with the months or years. I'm quite sensitive to these fumes, and end up coughing like crazy for hours after. The phenomena of increasingly smelly products seems to be well known, judging from what I've found on the web. It doesn't matter ho w high end you try to buy, the smell doesn't seem to be correlated. Even m ostly metal fans are afflicted with this problem. The fan that I found to be the least obnoxious in the past was Sunbeam SSF1 600RC oscillating stand fan: 01R1XJ9A However, the more recent ones I've bought exude the oil/plastic smell, espe cially when the ambient temperature is hot and/or it has been running for a n hour or so. No worse than other fans. But it gets me worried. Either j oin the ranks of large quantity electricity users and get A/C (and banish f resh air from my apartment forever), swelter in unimaginable heat, or breat h the fumes and eventually die. As I do not know what is causing the smell , I am not sure whether I can do anything about it. If it is hot plastic, likely not. If it's bad oil, maybe I can oil the motor and hope that the g ood quality oil I use will displace the bad original oil. I know, it's mor e likely they will mix and stay there forever, but I'm really out of option s. I haven't given it a look-see and try. I've been trying to find instructio ns, pictures, or videos on the web showing how to get at the inside. Would anyone know of such material? I have no fear that I will void the warrant y (which I certainly will) -- when you can't breathe, a warranty becomes un important. As far as maiming myself in the process, there is nothing in th e instruction booklet warning about dangers of self servicing (most other p roducts...

Jun 26, 2013 22 Replies

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Stormin Mormon 13 years ago

Please upload the odor to youtube, or place it in your smellevision.

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franklin.macintosh 12 years ago

This summer, I've used my least problematic fans without setting them to oscillate. I notice that this is strongly correlated with the absence of the oil smells.

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2tedthatguy 9 years ago

I have had the same problem with this fan I brought from family dollar a ye ar ago made by the brand cool master it smells of fuels and makes me light headed I bought a new fan from menards a smaller box fan made by comfort zo ne you should check it out it doesn't have a smell to it at all.

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