[Skywave]

Lucifer:
I realise that you do have a limited knowledge of things electrical, so a few initial remarks may help.

1. You refer to 'positive' mains. That is incorrect. Should be 'Live' mains. The 'live' mains wire in the U.K. is now coloured brown. The 'other' connection to the mains supply is called 'neutral'. In the U.K., this wire is coloured blue. (Vintage electrical equipment had red for 'live' and black for 'neutral'. That does not apply here.) The safety earth wire from the mains source is a wire coloured green or green and yellow. That wire should be connected to any metalwork that a user of that equipment may come into contact with. Some modern equipment is so constructed that there is no such metal to touch. This is called 'double insulated' equipment and does not need the green / yellow earth wire connection. I suspect that your fan comes into this category, but if there is any metal that anyone might touch, make sure that that metal is connected to the aforesaid green/yellow wire from the mains plug.

2. Your resistance readings are commensurate with the attached wiring diagram. The box labelled 'switch' will be a four-position switch: one position will be 'off'. The other three positions will be for the three speeds.

3. What now follows is my strong suspicion as to how this fan + switch should be wired. It is how I would wire it (and the switch) to see if things work as expected. If you choose to connect the fan and switch as per my drawing and apply a.c. mains to that arrangement, you do so at your own risk.

4. Via the switch, the brown wire will connect to the black wire for slowest speed; the brown wire will connect to the grey wire for intermediate speed; the brown wire will connect to the green wire for fastest speed. The brown wire will not connect to any wire for the 'off' position. The switch must be of the type whereby the brown wire can only connect to ONE of the three wires: black or grey or green.

5. In my drawing, the N refers to mains 'neutral'; the L to mains 'live'. I have not shown any 'safety earth' connection for reasons of clarity - but refer to my comment about that in my para. 1

6. In my drawing, I have used the standard drawing symbol to represent a resistance. In practice, these 'resistances' will be inductances: the resistances are simply the resistance of those inductances. Generally speaking, in a.c. motors, the higher the inductance, the greater the resistance. However, a perfect inductance will have zero resistance! (I realise that may sound very confusing, but an explanation for all that can wait for another thread elsewhere - if you wish to pursue the matter - it's not relevant to this thread).

And finally, the best of luck with it!

Al.