Shop Vac - resuscitate before death?

Henry W

Henry
Corporate Member
Shop vac starting to howl like a dying animal, and smell like burning rubber.
Any sort of PM I could do to elongate it's life, or is it inevitably part of the 'disposable society'? It was a Lowe's purchase maybe 10 years ago, not an expensive brand. Nothing special about it.
 

MarkE

Mark
Corporate Member
Had a similar situation with my Craftsman vac. Turned out the blower separated from the motor shaft. I repaired it once, but it came apart again shortly after. The parts to fix it would cost about half the price of a new vac.

I ended up replacing it with a Ridgid with a lifetime service agreement.
 

Jim M.

Woody
Corporate Member
I had a similar experience as Mark, parts were available, but decided to scraps what I could and went with the Ridgid which had a lifetime service agreement.
 

FlyingRon

Moderator
Ron
Take that vac to the nearest lake and give the poor soldier a burial at sea (lake)

Pop
Nah, the fishes won't like it.

My grandfather had a great line for situations like this (he was a TV repair guy back in the day and he sometimes got calls for basketcases):

Grandad: I know how you can fix it.
Customer: How?
Grandad: Got an ax?
 

old-delta

Wes
Senior User
I have a ShopVac I bought in 2001. It's been through everything and still works great. The hose is actually deteriorating it's so old.
I agree with Henry, the repair cost is cost prohibitive to a new. If you find a ShopVac on sale that may be a good choice. I'd go with the steel canister vs
plastic. It'll likely last a long time.
 

RandyJ

Randy
Corporate Member
Nah, the fishes won't like it.

My grandfather had a great line for situations like this (he was a TV repair guy back in the day and he sometimes got calls for basketcases):

Grandad: I know how you can fix it.
Customer: How?
Grandad: Got an ax?
My dad: Know how to fix it? Bush it!
Customer: What?
My dad: Throw it just as far in the bushes as you can.

If it was really bad, he would say: "Tie a quarter to it so you can say you actually threw away something."
 

ehpoole

Administrator
Ethan
If the motor itself has begun to burn up then there is nothing at all that can be done to extend its life as once the coils start burning up and shorting out the motor often has only minutes to hours of life left in it — such is the death knell of every universal motor once they overheat severely. Other things to inspect would be the brushes and commutator bars as well as the bearings to verify that they are all in good condition as well as they are also wear items.

However, if it is a loose impeller as others have suggested, and that is a very real possibility, then you could fix that but you will, as already mentioned, likely discover that it comes lose once again not long after. However, provided that the impeller is in one piece and has not split at the hub then you may well be able to permanently address the problem by drilling a (cotter pin sized) hole straight through the hub of the impeller, through the motor shaft, and out the other side so that you may then pin the impeller into position with a cotter pin as the cotter pin will keep the impeller from slipping on the shaft or otherwise moving out of position. If the impeller has split along the hub, however, then you will need to replace the impeller as sometimes the pressure of the press-to-fit hub and aging plastic does lead to the plastic splitting where it has been pressed onto the shaft and is under significant permanent strain. Given the RPMs involved, you would not want to keep running an impeller with a split hub since the centrifugal forces developed could lead to propagation of the crack and sudden catastrophic failure of the impeller, so replace the impeller if damaged.

Good luck!
 

Henry W

Henry
Corporate Member
Thanks all, sadly it is now gone the way of disposal tools... RIP, it had a decent productive life.
 

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