Omnivent fan motor

(Moved from Touring Cheaper)

Our 4 year old caravan was recently serviced and the engineer noted that the Omnivent motor was ‘on its way out’.  The motor was noisy, lacking power and reluctant to start.  New motors (with fan) cost around £90.  I decided to investigate, the motor is easy to remove and I found that, once removed, the casing could be separated into two halves.  This immediately revealed the problem, one of the brushes was stuck in its holder and not contacting the commutator properly.  Having freed this and applied a little WD40 to the brush holders the motor is now working fine.  The case was resealed with a liquid gasket on reassembly.  I was impressed by the build quality of the fan motor, with substantial roller bearings top and bottom and the sealed metal casing – looked to me like the fan should outlast the caravan!  I noticed from the internet that a number of users had similar problems and replaced the motor at considerable expense – I wonder how often this may have been unnecessary expense if the problem was simply a sticky brush – given the build quality of the motor I would expect it to have a long life.