Thermocouple/ burner issue with cooling wheel

duncans7

Hello, has anyone encountered a inducer cooling wheel blowing enough air in cabinet to blow on the pilot and thermocouple and burner flames. When I put my hand in the way the flames are calm and blue and when I take my hand away you can see movement on flames and can feel air blowing in cabinet from cooling wheel.
it is on an older Bryant standing pilot furance.
394had024050A. 

Pilot has gone out multiple times over course of few days. 

mattmia2

how big is the pilot flame? Probably not the fan on the inducer if it worked for 35 years and just started now.

duncans7

The pilot flame is as big as it can be and I have made sure thermocouple is as far in flame as possible. The inducer is a little noisy now which is what made me look closer into. I also notice as slight occasional smell of nat gas when it is running which also made me think about air blowing on flame creating incomplete combustion. I have seen like metal cowlings or covers around replacement inducer motor cooling wheel which also makes me think they are trying to keep cooling wheel air contained. 

mattmia2

does the flame move enough that the thermocouple is no longer in it?

It is much more likely thethermocouple is bad. There are ways to check the voltage.

EBEBRATT-Ed

You could have a bad heat exchanger.

Start the furnace from a cold start and watch the flames very closely. When the indoor fan come on see if things change. If they do the HX is bad

Be very careful with that you could be putting flue gas and CO into the house

mattmia2

that was my first thought but the inducer is supposed to be making draft on the combustion side.

still a great idea to look at the burner while the blower starts to make sure the hx is in good shape.

JUGHNE

Does that pilot flame have it's own small flue pipe (maybe 1") connected to the outlet of the flue fan inducer?

Carrier/Bryant had some sort of early standing pilot with inducer fan.