I ordered the Oneida Gorilla shortly after I read the first post from Jim Becker that Oneida had launched a new unit. I had their 2 h.p. commercial unit last year but never installed it and ended up selling it due to some unexpected expenses.
My son Seth and I left Halifax around 6 last evening (he was ina provincial basketball tournament this weekend, their team won bronz which was great), bound for Calais Maine where I had the unit shipped to, about a 5 hour drive but for the most part it’s all four lane and excellent roads. The U.S. border guard was a great old guy, we chatted a bit and he recommended a good place to stay and an Inn that served an awesome breakfast, he was bang on, on both accounts.
We sat on the front deck this morning around 6 and enjoyed a coffee, it was beautiful and a lot warmer than Halifax, the water front was a stone throw...simply amazing!
We headed over to the UPS warehouse around 7 a.m. and loaded the 5 boxes, the box with the blower motor is 114 pounds but the rest are in the 30 to 50 pound range. I had to unpack the cone, even with a long box on my Ranger, they would not all fit. After some shopping for sports items we headed home and arrived in Halifax around 6:00 this evening.
After a quick cup of Java and supper we headed out to the shop to start putting the unit together, as noted by others this is not a one person job. The blower housing with the motor is well over a hundred pounds and a bit awkward. Seth noticed one thing after the blower housing was mounted to the wall brackets that does concern me, although I haven’t fired it up yet and probably won’t be able to until the weekend.
When he spun the fan by hand, he noticed the steel in the top plate was of varying thickness. It goes from close to 5/16+” thick to 3/16” and it is very noticeable. Perhaps this is done to balance the unit, I guess I will find out when it is turned on. The motor was wired for a different rotation than noted in the Oneida manual, so we switched the wires around. Although it comes with a mag switch, I bought their remote with two transmitters as my young fellow works with me in the shop a lot, on his own projects. Having two units should make life easier.
Now the BIG surprise, it has a Baldor motor. I have read on the forums that they have not started shipping the units with the import motor, to me, the entire unit looks exactly the same as my commercial unit, even the filter looks the same and I can’t imagine requiring heavier metal than what is in this.
I will be running about 20’ of 7” with a couple of branches. The shop is currently piped with 6” snap lock however we moved one section under the shop floor Saturday, we will move the rest from the attic to under the shop floor this coming weekend, something I have always wanted to do. Due to the way it’s worked out, I will box the pipe in using rigid insulation, I was going to buy pipe insulation until I checked the prices, around here it costs twice as much as the pipe. Getting the joints apart due to the metal tape is a real chore however someone sent me a PM and suggested a heat gun, that really helps.
That’s about it, here are a few pictures. This was one super great trip, aside from getting the cyclone, Seth, who has a love of science, gave me a very interesting education!!!
Thanks for looking and I’ll post next week on how it works……but if anyone has any comments on the fan plate, I would be interested in hearing….perhaps I should call Oneida also and see what they say. As for packaging, I would give the guys an A++
Andy
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Originally Posted by Jim Becker
. But the way my luck works they will forget to ship the motor! Congratulations.
