A while ago, we got a nice massive slab of new cream carpet for free, and laid it down in the front room to stop the boy smacking his head on the laminate so much as he learned to walk
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All was ace for about 2 weeks. Then something got spilt, shoes were forgotten about and, more catastrophically when I stripped down my Hoover Turbomaster, oily crap got on it and then walked about...
So, we needed a shampooer. We have the Aquamaster, but tbh it wouldn't do a great job, we needed something with some agitation behind it. So, my usual skinflint ebay search led me to find this
Of course, I like a challenge, and it was a good price, cheap enough that I could break it for spares and make many times what it cost. So, £5 and a drive at lunchtime later got me this
I've yet to do a before video, so I'll pop that in here when I do that, but for now, I needed to confirm what the issue actually was. Many other people had their money on the motor being scrap, but, with optimism in the air, I got it apart
(I'll do more of a full how to if it would be handy? There's naff all info on these on the net, and Vax didn't want to know)
First, the water tanks come off, the sucky head bit comes off, the spinscrub brushes unscrews, then the hood unscrews
This sprung bar at the front is the actuator switch for the brushes, when the machine is reclined they turn on (hopefully, not actually tried them yet
) then when upright they turn off
Once the rod is removed this part is left which I think does the actual turning on and off
With that removed, the spinscrub motor unit unscrews to leave this
To the right of this picture, the 'turbo max extract setting' lever thing has to be moved out of the way to get at a screw. Once moved, all the motor housing screws can be undone
So, cheap chinese motor (that Vax don't sell on it's own). It's blown, so I thought I would have the armature out to see if it could be fixed
No actual damage, just excessive carbon wear. The lady said she had only used it once or twice (although looking at the state of the thing she has really dirty carpets)
This is where we are now
The carbons had a chipped edge on each one
I cleaned up the comm
This is the motor. A GS8222. Googling revealed I could buy 50,000 of them for about £3 a unit, but not on their own. So I lobbed it all back together and gave it a try, and nothing, still bubbling and blown
It has also been wet it seems
So, it went into the shed whilst I pondered its future. Qtex list the motor as a special order spare, and Stu informed me that could be a 2 week to 2 year delay, depending on when they get an order in. So, some ebay browsing happened, and on page 27 of 'Vax Motor' results, I found this
which looked identical enough to be worth a shot. It turned up today, and is a GS8222! Made by a different company, with different numbers on the serial sticker, but it look identical enough to get excited about!
I've not fitted it yet, will do that tomorrow, but whilst at my mums today I asked if she had any solution I could use to test it, don't want to spend out on it yet. She has a Vax Spring clean horrible thing, and she gave me all of this!
The big 5l bottle is Nuchem I think, that came with my George back in 2006. So that'll all be enough to get started.
I have no idea if it will run tbh, or what caused the old motor to burn out in the first place. Bad motor? Got wet? Crap design by VAX? Overfilled machine? Who knows, we shall find out!
Stay tuned, we'll get the new motor fitted and see what happens. I hope it does work, it seems an OK machine when working