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(More customer reviews)The short story is that the part works and does its job reasonably well, only just not as well as before with our old, noisy, larger motor. The fleshed out saga, on the other hand, is as follows:
When we bought our house nearly a quarter of a century ago, the bathroom on the main floor of our then new home came with a Nutone QT-110 fan. While I don't know how long it had been in the house prior to us taking possession of the place, while we've been here that fan unit gave us 15 years of solid service before its bearings finally wore out. Conversely, the past nine years we've torn through three QT-110 replacement units, the worst of which (the middle of the three) only lasting a little over 2 years. Because the QT-110 went out of production a while back I had to hunt hard to find them, particularly the last two; that pair were NOS units purchased from a clearing house on eBay.
While authorized replacement parts are still available for the QT-110 according to the Nutone/Broan website, our recent negative experiences with the replacement units and the harsh reviews here on Amazon for the 'correct' replacement motor assembly put a serious wet blanket over any desire to go down this slippery slope any further. Mixed metaphors aside, unlike the current QT110 variations on the market the original QT-110 design is hard to step away from simply because when replacement IS necessary the process is so easy and painless...just as long as the parts are in hand, that is. This is due to the lack of need for any hardwiring work or the shutting down of power at the electrical panel, thus resetting appliances, clocks, phones, cable boxes, etc. The fan motor assembly is separate from the housing; loosen three screws, unplug the old motor assembly from the 110v outlet built into the existing fan box assembly, take out the new motor assembly from the new fan housing in the same way and put that in the old housing in the ceiling. Any QT-110 owner who's had to replace their unit knows this incredible ease very well.
Because this bathroom in question is small (roughly 40 SF in area), I decided to follow the path that others who have posted here on Amazon had gone before and used replacement components from the downsized QT-80, which are still available here on Amazon as of this writing. I bought both the fan assembly as well as a separate motor, just to have as a backup. Upon their arrival, I decided to use the motor-only unit first while re-using the QT-110 mounting ring and impeller wheel, both of which only had roughly three years of duty on them. Disassembly wasn't overly difficult though the caked-on mess of questionably safe-to-breathe (moldy?) dust was something that had to be dealt with. One piece of advice: you may want to consider getting a new impeller wheel rather than trying to save the old one. Even just three+ years of dirt and dust was harder to clean off than I initially presumed it would be. I ultimately was forced into using some pretty fierce chemicals in cleaning that thing up when mild soap and water clearly wasn't doing the job.
The reassembly process was relatively easy and the fan was up and running straight away. The horrible racket that the last QT-110-based motor was gleefully gone, but sadly so was that motor's obviously more powerful pulling strength. From what I remember of the QT-110 replacement assemblies when they were new, this QT-80 motor is about the same in terms of operational noise level. After only the very first shower it was noticeable that the QT-80 motor is significantly slower to evacuate the resultant steam and humid air out of this bathroom. While it's not horrible by any means, it's also a bit sad that the strong QT-110's air pulling power is no longer around. Whether this leads to greater potential for mold/mildew buildup has yet to be determined, but the greater piece of mind--and air exchanges--that the more powerful QT-110 motor brought to the table is already missed.
So in the end and chiefly due to the apparent poor quality of current QT-110 replacement parts, we in effect downsized from the QT-110 to the QT-80. If the plaster and lath on our bathroom's ceiling could talk, they would surely thank us for ending the violent vibration and rattling the old 110 motor was putting out in its last days. After the poor durability of our replacement QT-110 gear we'll have to wait and see if the QT-80 parts will be any better in terms of longevity and lifespan. And we'll just have to be patient to determine if this is the right decision from an everyday usage standpoint as well. For now though our little main floor bathroom is a peaceful--if a slightly more humid--place once again.
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Cross Reference: Nutone QT90T, 86323000, 86323-000, JA2B089, JA2B089N
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