David Kilnapp Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 (edited) Good evening fan friends. The Kanthal arrived today. It took a bit of work to wind the Kanthal around the tower after having painted the Sodium Silicate over the asbestos on the tower. The Kanthal kept slipping down the tower. The fix was to take my tiny tweezers to create small notches in the sodium silicate to hold the Kanthal in place while I was winding it. Below is what the coil looked like with 6.5 feet of nichrome wire which provided 26 ohms of resistance (not enough to give a noticably slower second speed). I replaced the nichrome with about half as much Kanthal or 3.5 feet, which was rated at 14.3 ohms/foot. This provided 50 ohms of resistance which gave me a nice second speed. Below is a picture of the rewound choke coil with the Kanthal wire (thanks to Tom Newcity for suggesting this). Give a listen to the video below and you'll hear the nice second speed with the new Kanthal wire. This was much easier to do than I had imagined so I would encourage anyone to give it a try. Edited February 26 by David Kilnapp 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Rathberger Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 Nice job David. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave McManaman Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 Excellent. Thanks for posting about it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Wendel Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 Good job, David. When I was restoring my lollipop (since sold), I stalled out on rewinding the choke coil. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Kilnapp Posted February 25 Author Share Posted February 25 I will be happy to help anyone that needs their lollipop choke coil rewound using this technique at no charge. It's not as hard as it looks but it did take a bit of work to get the hang of it. The steps are: 1. Remove the coil and put your ohm meter on the nichrome wire where it attaches to the first switch position. Put the second lead of the ohm meter at the end of the winding where it attaches to the copper wire. In other words, find the resistance of the existing wire. Mine ohm'd out at 26 ohms. 2. Remove the nichrome wire but leave the copper loop in place. 3. Buy the Kanthal wire seen above and measure out 3.5 feet and wrap that around a piece of PVC pipe without allowing the wire loops around the PVC to touch. Tape each end to the PVC and put your ohm meter on each end. Test for resistance. Cut the wire until you get 50 ohms or so by touching each end with your ohm meter. 4. Remove the wire from the PVC pipe and put a small loop in the wire at one end and wrap that around the first position of the choke coil. 5. Slowly start pulling the wire around the tower holding the wire against each leg of the tower to keep it in place before moving around the next leg of the tower where you will hold it in place with your finger (or thumb). 6. Continue until you get to the end of the wire which you will need to attach to the copper wire that is looped around the top of the tower. You won't be able to solder the Kanthal (it won't adhere to Kanthal like it does to copper), so you may have to make a small loop of copper wire to twist around the copper loop where you can attach the Kanthal. In my case, the Kanthal ended right where the copper loop was vertical. 7. Retest the ends of the Kanthal wire to assure that you have about 50 ohms of resistance. 8. Connect the tower to the fan without reinstalling it first and test that the resistance of the new wire still yields 50 ohms. The Kanthal will briefly smoke when it heats up for the first time, but only briefly so don't be alarmed. 9. Reinstall the choke coil when you are satisfied that the second speed is what you want. You can always remove a turn of the Kanthal, if the RPM's of the motor are too slow. 10. While you are doing this, you might want to consider changing out the parts behind the removeable door with Darryl Hudson's kit. Below is the original arrangement: Below is Darryl's replacement: 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobby Gaines Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 Great job David! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Kilnapp Posted February 26 Author Share Posted February 26 Thanks Bobby. Appreciate that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Duffy Posted April 21 Share Posted April 21 On 2/24/2024 at 6:44 PM, David Kilnapp said: It took a bit of work to wind the Kanthal around the tower after having painted the Sodium Silicate over the asbestos on the tower. The Kanthal kept slipping down the tower. The fix was to take my tiny tweezers to create small notches in the sodium silicate to hold the Kanthal in place while I was winding it. Below is what the coil looked like with 6.5 feet of nichrome wire which provided 26 ohms of resistance (not enough to give a noticably slower second speed). What was the purpose of the sodium silicate? Is it an important step when using kanthal wire? If so, what brand/concoction did you use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Whitfield Posted April 25 Share Posted April 25 Nice job. This should be reprinted in the magazine, tbh. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Grove Posted April 25 Share Posted April 25 Hi David, Maybe I missed your answer to Rob what is the purpose of the sodium silicate? I have a similar but different senerio on a ECK .The copper wire is absent from my switch, I see yours is bridging two terminals, so two positions would be the same speed? I'm sending a picture of my switch,it looks like someone was going to complete but never did. So would I need a copper wire to connect the kanthal wire to for each speed except high? And if so where would kanthal wire go for another speed? Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Campbell Posted April 25 Share Posted April 25 On 4/21/2024 at 7:47 AM, Rob Duffy said: What was the purpose of the sodium silicate? Is it an important step when using kanthal wire? If so, what brand/concoction did you use? I believe he used it solely for locking down fibers on the asbestos insulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Grove Posted April 25 Share Posted April 25 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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