You just can't get he customers these days......

[Ed Sirett]

I suspect that there is rather more to repairing a fan than fitting new bearings. Aren't the bearings sintered bronze and need soaking in oil and other inconvenient tricks?

[geoff]

There certainly is, as people find out when they can't get the impeller off and then distort it so badly it can't be balanced again

... then they ask me for an exchange one

No, on a Solo 2 they are ball races, and you really need high speed quiet bearings which can take the heat as well. Cheap bearings which are suitable for e.g. a photocopier don't fare so well in such an environment

I buy phosphor-bronze bearings already impregnated, and leave them in an oil bath until required

[John Stumbles]

I understood the word was a corruption of 'Egyptian'.

I don't know how authoritative it is but Wiktionary supports this:

"Earlier Middle English gipcyan gyptian, < Old French gyptien, short for Egyptian < Latin Aegyptius; when they first appeared in England in the sixteenth century they were believed to have come from Egypt."

Philip Pullman's Northern Lights (The Golden Compass to the USAnians & movies) the nomadic canal-boat people are actually called Gyptians, just as in the Dark Materials stories other words from modern English have similar names as if the mutation of language has taken a different course e.g. our Chocolate is their Chocolatl

[Andy Hall]

You mean like sorbet is "sorbett" and not "sorbay" ?

[ARWadsworth]

You must be doing something wrong then.

Adam

[Stuart Noble]

So sell some to that shitty customer and he can put them on EBay.

[geoff]

I could flog him some "preloved" ones ...

[nightjar]

Unfortunately, Norscreen is a well-known trading name and appears on all the products, moulded in in some cases. I have registered

and may have to end up using that.

Colin Bignell

[Martin Bonner]

In fact, they almost certainly originally came from Northen India. (Err, well /actually/ of course, almost certainly we /all/ came from East Africa ... but the ancestors of the Gypsies were in Northen India more recently than that).