Not all restorations are as invasive as, tearing it down, sandblasting the paint, laying primer, painting, rewiring, cleaning the hardware, etc. Sometimes a restoration is as simple as putting a fresh coat of polish on the old paint, or buffing the brass blade and cage. Sometimes it just needs some TLC with a stator rewire. I guess what I’m trying to say is, some fans don’t need to look like a million bucks, to be a million bucks.

I had a client send me this GE Coin-Op fan, and honestly the only things it needed was a rewire job, a fresh coat of polish on the paint and I left it at that after looking at the outside. Now, once I got into the bones of working on this, it turned into a little more expense, as internal working parts were broken. But we got that figured out, no problem.

I always start coin-ops with breaking them down, piece by piece to figure out what I need to make this thing run again. I knew it would need a stator rewire, and the rotor would need to be cleaned.

As you can see the rotor (top) and the stator (bottom) both were dirty, and were in need of the attention.

I cleaned the rotor and I rewired the stator. I also cleaned the metal of the stator as you can see in the pictures below. 

After a few other replacement parts were acquired, the fan was put back together. 

It’s also important to note, the original bank door (the big metallic circle just below) was still intact. Normally we make these out of brass, but this had the original door so I left it as it was.

These fans are difficult to work on, when you first start. Even after restoring or working on probably around 15 at this point, I still run into problems. But once you get a hang of the basics, they become enjoyable to work on.

Have any questions about your coin-op or your antique fan in general? Send it over to eddiefrankdesigns@gmail.com