On Jun 27, 4:03*am, harry wrote:
On Jun 26, 9:49*pm, mcp6453 wrote:
On the advice of Consumer Reports and others, I purchased a Hoover U5140-900
vacuum cleaner a couple of years ago. As of today, it has broken two belts. My
daughter had it in her apartment at college, so it has not had heavy use.
After I took it apart, I checked the motor pulley to see if it had any dirt
accumulation. Since it did, I turned on the power to the vacuum and held a paper
towel against the pulley to clean it. Much to my surprise, it burned my finger.
Thinking that the friction between the pulley and my finger would easily explain
the burning sensation, I turned off the power and then felt the pulley (which
really looks more like a spindle to me). It was very hot. There is no way that
the friction between the pulley and the paper towel caused it to heat that much.
Therefore, I have to conclude that the motor is heating the pulley.
The pulley has to be getting hot enough to weaken or melt the belt. I haven't
taken the motor housing apart to see if there is an obstruction, but before I
dig too deeply, I wanted to ask whether anyone here had heard of such a problem.
My guess is that the bearing in the motor where the pulley protrudes is bad. If
that's true, I doubt the unit is worth repairing, if you can even get a motor.
It's not an expensive unit anyway, but it was highly rated.
Here is the manual:http://www.hoover.com/pdfs/manuals/U5140900.pdfThereis not
much there in terms of servicing information.
The usual reason for frequent belt failure is the agitator is not
rotating freely so causing the belt to slip on the motor pulley, so
check it spins freely. * The agitator comes apart by unscrewing the
end plates. You often find hairs wrapped around the shaft by the
bearings are the problem.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Yes the agitator or 'beater' (as some call it in an upright vacuum)
may not be rotating freely so the belt jams and burns up.
Hair and other debris around the end bearings of the ''agitator' can
often clog them. Also a nail, or hairpin jam, can be deadly. On belts.
But that is preferable to the motor jamming and burning out! We even
had a small stone from someone's shoe that jammed ours!
We always keep spare belts (and the correct disposable bags) on hand
and every few months check that the 'agitator' spins freely. Use oil
very sparingly on the agitator end bearings. Only takes a few minutes.
They are a prettyy simple device; basically an electric motor driving
a fan and an agitator.
However like most things electro-mecahnical a vacuum needs some
preventive and ongoing maintenance. Ours is 40+ years old, and used a
couple of times a week for a few minutes each time needs very little
attention; maybe every couple of years; unless one can hear (or smell
a rubber belt burning) that something is wrong.
So unless one just waits until something goes wrong and then junks it
and buys a new one. But that's consumerism/over consumption and our
garbage dumps/landfills are full of stuff that need not be there.
We have another partially stripped similar model vacuum that we kept
just in case the motor in ours ever did burn out. Since that hasn't
happened in over 40 years I guess OK to junk one or the other vaccuum
since it looks like both are going to outlive me!
Oh.BTW fixed one for somebody and found the belt had been put on
backwards. So the agitator was turning wrong way.