Just a story. No questions, although some of you might still have
answers.

I have a fan with a little 3 1/2" x 3 1/2" flat metal base that I keep
mounted on the window sill over my bed. It's the only fan that will
fit, and I have to nail one of the corners into the wood sill to keep
myself or the curtains from knocking it over. It has one blade and as
protection, only a couple wires so that it's easy to stick one's
fingers in it. But the motor isn't powerful enough to hurt someone
much, I think**. It's 50 years old or more and I think it was once
riveted to a factory machine and used to blow air on the operator.

It has to be oiled every 2 weeks to 2 months. I'm guessing it only
last 2 weeks when I didn't get the oil in the right place. I don't
know why it lasts 2 months sometimes.

I've let it get unoiled several times to the point where, in the
middle of the night, it stops spinning and gets very hot. But it
always works fine again after I oil it.

One time I couldn't find my 30 weight oil, and I used 10W-30. The
same night or soon after it stopped spinning in the middle of the
night and smelled bad, although I couldn't tell if that was the
windings or the oil burning.

I oiled it again, but it never got up to more than half speed, and was
very hot after about 10 minutes. I kept wondering if it was the
10W-30 somehow.

Finally noticed that the blade had come loose from the shaft. It was
like this when I got it, (**which is why it never hurt to put my
fingers in there,) and it would make a noise (that everyone at work
laughed at, and they bought me another fan, which I didn't want!)
until after about 30 seconds the blade was spinning as fast as the
armature. But this time, it never got up to speed and it didn't make
any noise, and it got very hot. I thought it was ruined, but now I
think the fan wasn't blowing enough air through the motor case vents.

I had glued the shaft once, and now I reglued it, and now it spins
fast and doesn't overheat. It's back to normal!

Hope this wasn't boring.