Had to change my wind direction instrument today

[ironeagleuk]

The last few days looking at my wind direction thing, I noticed it wasn't moving as freely as I thought it should, and my wind direction graphs were rather flat-lined



So I got it down today as the weather was good...mild, and virtually no wind....and discovered that the vane wouldn't rotate freely, or go through a full rotation.

So I prised off the pointy bit, and saw inside that the bearing race was some broken. Here's a close-up pic of it....you can see 2 of the ball-bearings at the bottom



It's been up there nearly 3.5 years....is that a good inings?

Fortunately I had a spare, so I was able to get it back up and running, and now my wind direction looks abit better

[Mike D]

Hi Iron eagle,

Had this happen to my unit last week, exactly same thing.

I manage to 'fettle' it with a standard 6201 sealed bearing I had knocking around. This fits exactly into the circular lip on the base, and the spigot on the head fits into the bore (with a bit of gentle sanding to reduce the spigot diameter a bit), also the various webs in the rotating head had to be 'adjusted' to enable the head to fit over the bearing properly. It revolves fine, and as I used a sealed bearing it has a slight resistance to prevent the wind vane over rotating.