camray 2 oil boiler lockout

[sureicandoit]

hi there, my first post on here, just wondering if anyone can help.I have a fairly old oil fired camray 2 boiler with a riello 40/3bm burner.For the last 6 months i knew from the horrible noises that the burner motor was on the way out but just wanted to put off the expense of dealing with it until it was dead,at the same time as making horrible noises (which would sometimes go away for a few weeks before returning again) the lockout was kicking in every few hours requiring me to press the reset on the control box.Eventually even pressing that didnt fire it up again but i found that by opening the hydrolic door on the fan housing and physically pushing the fan round a bit with a pen that it would fire up on the next push on the re set button.This continued until recently when it did finally die,so i ordered a new motor online and paid an engineer(will have a go at most things but not when oil joints are involved) to fit it.He then showed me that the oil pump was also dead so i got one from a plumbcentre parts store and he fitted that.Boiler fired up and off went the engineer ,then 1.5 hrs later,yes thats right..the lockout came on again and after calling him he said it had to be the solenoid on its way out,being an easy job i got the part and fitted it, and still the damn thing goes to lockout at regular intervals.Is the next option to replace the capacitor,or is that nothing to do with the problem? Next in my list after capacitor would be to see if i can get a new /secondhand photocell for the control box and then if that fails a whole new control box.The odd thing is that yesterday after locking out it wouldnt re start until i did the little "push the fan around a bit"trick, maybe that was just a coincidence and it was going to start anyway but it puzzles me as its a new motor and oil pump and both run quitly and smoothly and are not catching on anything.Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks

 

[Burnerman]

The capacitor is there on the motor to instruct it which way to initially spin....if the motor starts every time now, then its ok.
The solenoid - which sits on the top or side of the oil pump - is the most likely part to cause your burner lockout. However, you say that it is new.
Did the motor come with a new capacitor?
John

 

[slapper]

Get a new capacitor, pump,motor, all have a bearing on this problem. If you spin motor and it kicks in more than likely a £6.00 capacitor

 

[Boilerman2]

It Definately WON'T be the Solenoid, replace the motor the pump has probably leaked oil into the motor so that will need replacing as well, and a capacitor should give you a reliable boiler again

 

[sureicandoit]

The capacitor is there on the motor to instruct it which way to initially spin....if the motor starts every time now, then its ok.
The solenoid - which sits on the top or side of the oil pump - is the most likely part to cause your burner lockout. However, you say that it is new.
Did the motor come with a new capacitor?
John

many thanks for all the replies, no the new motor didnt come with a new capacitor,and yes i have fitted a new solenoid(along with new oil pump and burner motor) which hasnt solved the problem of the lockouts, with regards to the purpose of the capacitor i understood from research that all it did was fire the correct voltage down the wire to start the motor ? so seems the next move is to get a new capacitor fitted? and if that fails ....what next?............. many thanks again to you all.

 

[Burnerman]

Not much else to replace mate, but yes - a replacement capacitor is called for. Basically, these give a pulse for the motor to start in the required direction - without them the motor oscillates at 50 Hz. Spinning the fan with a pen does similar things - tells the motor which way to turn.
Wishing you luck!
John

 

[oilman]

The noisy motor could have been cured by replacing the bearings. A decent engineer would have saved you time and money and your problem would be history, but then you know for next time.

There are two windings in the motor which generate magnetic fields. To get the motor to run, the fields must occur at slightly different times to give a displacement between them. This is the function of the capacitor. It shifts one of the fields to give the starting torque. These solid capacitors gradually reduce in value as voltage spikes damage them, and eventually the shift of the fields doesn't give enough effort to start the motor.

The locking out may be a worn oil pump. The motor is able to start when the pump is cool (like when you press the button after it has had some time to cool down). After some time running the pump can get warm enough to stiffen up, the boiler cuts out on the thermostat, but when it tries to fire a few minutes later, the pump is still hot and stiff, hence the lockout.

 

[sureicandoit]

The noisy motor could have been cured by replacing the bearings. A decent engineer would have saved you time and money and your problem would be history, but then you know for next time.

There are two windings in the motor which generate magnetic fields. To get the motor to run, the fields must occur at slightly different times to give a displacement between them. This is the function of the capacitor. It shifts one of the fields to give the starting torque. These solid capacitors gradually reduce in value as voltage spikes damage them, and eventually the shift of the fields doesn't give enough effort to start the motor.

The locking out may be a worn oil pump. The motor is able to start when the pump is cool (like when you press the button after it has had some time to cool down). After some time running the pump can get warm enough to stiffen up, the boiler cuts out on the thermostat, but when it tries to fire a few minutes later, the pump is still hot and stiff, hence the lockout.

thanks very much to your,and all the other replies,the oil pump is also brand new like the motor so there cannot be any stiffness there ,but as i suspected it would seem the capacitor is probably on its way out so i will replace it,cant believe you can get so much help on this site and again many thanks to you all !!!