Everyone knows that bearings are a consumable wear item, and that the power head of a vacuum likely contains bearings that will eventually need to be replaced. Yet when the manufacturer wants you to toss out the entire roller and pay $80 for the privilege, that feels rather steep and unnecessary. In the case of [Mark Furneaux], the roller in the power head of his Filter Queen brand vacuum felt particularly over the top to toss, since it’s all fancy wood with very durable brushes.
One of the bearings had stopped being a bearing, resulting in the plastic that held it in place beginning to melt. Fortunately the damage hadn’t progressed to the point where printing a replacement was necessary, so instead it was time to figure out how to remove the bearings without permanent damage. The trick that the manufacturer used was to peen the ends of the metal shafts that the bearings fit onto, requiring some Dremel action to convince them to come off.
After some careful modifications like this, the remnants of the old bearings came off and their replacements could go on. Due to the metal shaft modifications, it is now mostly the plastic caps on either end which grip the bearings, but it seems to work well enough. For $2 in bearings and some labor on [Mark]’s end, he managed to keep a perfectly good roller brush out of the landfill, and future bearing replacements should be much easier.
Yup pretty easy. It’s the cheap bearings that cause problems.
Wow. Don’t think I’d ever invest in that brand. All of my vacuum cleaners have had easily removeable bearings, which is quite handy in a longhair household!
i just had a trim for the same reason. dont worry in six months it will be a mess again, and six years after that i will get it trimmed again.
My Electrolux has easily removed bearings too. The downside is that they tend to fall out when cleaning the brush, and then you have to dig them out of the trash if you are not careful.
Good work. Anyone buying that brand has to get decades of useful life in order to justify the absurdly high initial price. It’s run very like an MLM scheme.
This. My arrangement is that the wife buys this stuff, usually in response to late night infomercials, then I fix it so she does not buy it again.
We had our for over 20 years, so they will last a long time.
I have had great success lifting up a bearing’s plastic seal lip and putting a few drops of motor oil 5W30 in there. Once I used a needle and syringe to do it.
Threw my Hoover into the garbage, their vacuum cleaners were cheapened, then the brand name got bought out and they obsoleted all parts and support. What a mess.
Still have my 1950’s Rexair model D2 running. Looks like R2D2 when in the roller stand. Hmmm.
There is a lot of equipment that can have greatly extended life if the owner takes care to lubricate bearings. Electric space heater fans are probably good for 10,000 or 20,000 hours before the fan motor won’t start and needs to be oiled. Car alternators, small appliance motors, electric tools, some audio equipment; all can live longer and sometimes be resurrected by lubrication. It’s too bad that most things need to be disassembled to be lubricated.
i think id have just turned the motor on hit it with a file.
while it may not be a problem here, in general the bearing should be fixed on the rotating side, otherwise the shaft will roll inside the inner bearing hole and wear down increasingly fast (just mentioning it here, because this is an easy to miss trap for beginners)
Nice of the manufacturer to peen the shaft rather than use a simple snap ring.