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Shark Upright Vacuum Cleaner Repaired

By Jestine Yong on September 8, 2020

A customer brought in a Shark upright vacuum cleaner that would not work. They had also noticed that for some time the roller head feature had not worked.

So, I decided to start with the basics. Disassembling the vacuum exposed all the necessary components.

Firstly, I had to be sure that I had voltage to the switch and motor, which I did not.

It’s not unusual to find a broken power wire due to the cable being bend and twisted around storage hooks. After removing the power cord, I tested each individual wire. Sure enough, the neutral wire had a very high resistance.

After carefully examining the power cord, I could see a slight bend, so I decided to open up the cable at this point.

The break was near to the vacuum, so after shortening the power cable and reinstalling the wires back onto the vacuum, I decided to tackle the next problem – the non-operating power head.

After upending the vacuum, see what I found………

I was unsure that perhaps they had accidently sucked up their small dog into the vacuum, but no, it was just human hair. I thought that perhaps the motor had been burned out due to the hair jamming on the roller, seizing the motor. But before I guessed what had happened, I decided to do more testing.

I had 245 volts to the motor feed and needed to look further. This required As I lifted up the power head, I noticed a rattling, like something was floating around inside the head assembly. It became obvious after the cover was removed that the main filter capacitor had come adrift and after closer inspection of the circuit board, its location was obvious.

After testing it with my ESR meter, it was found to be well within range at 0.59 Ohms for a 400 Volt, 100 µf capacitor.

At this point I felt confident in reusing the capacitor. But how could I stop it falling off the circuit board again? It is a large component with a reletively large mass.

Once the capacitor was soldered back in place, the only thing I could think of using was silicon to help hold it and keep it from vibration. All I had is what I use in the workshop. I checked to ensure this was non-acidic, so that I didn’t create problems further down the track.

By using silicon, this should help hold the case of the capacitor and put less stress on the legs.

After reassembling all the components and covers, a quick road test proved that the vacuum was successfully repaired.

I did a quick vacuum of the lounge to make sure that it was operating, but my wife suggested I do more testing and pointed to the rest of the house! 😊

Sorry, no video with this repair guys – you’ll have to wait for the next article 😊

This article was prepared for you by Mark Rabone from Australia.

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Note: You can check out his previous repair article below:

https://jestineyong.com/abw-multimeter-blown-apart/

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Vacuum Cleaner Repair

14 Comments

Paris Azis

September 8, 2020 at 7:31 pm

Hey Mark

Keep in mind that these cables are made of copper cladded strands of aluminum. They usually break because aluminum has not the flexibility of copper, even being stranded cable.
Cheap,cheap,cheap, the birds are singing! Remember?
By the way, an easy test for verifying if the cable is made of aluminum is to use a cigarette lighter and burn one end of it after removing its external insulator. If you see the fine strands melting, they are made out of copper cladded aluminum. If they simply become red, without melting, they are of pure copper.
It's really impressive how many times I have seen this, especially on power tools.
Many people throw away their failing power tools believing that they are burned out and the only symptom is a broken cable...
In such cases, the NCV (non contact voltage detection) function of modern multimeters or current clamp meters is an invaluable function for spotting the point of breakage...

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- Paris Azis
  
  September 8, 2020 at 7:43 pm
  
  And I forgot to say that any attempt to tin such cable ends with your soldering iron will fail, making your nerves "light all your red lamps", as the solder will drop down in splashes and never sticking with the cable, no matter its quality...
  Only aluminum solder will save the case, if you have some available...
  
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  - Mark
    
    September 8, 2020 at 9:45 pm
    
    Thanks for those comments Paris.
    I have seen a lot of these broken wires recently - as you say, on power tools.
    I'll have to try that trick with the lighter.
    I hadn't thought of using the NCV feature of the multimeter for that purpose....I am doing a multimeter series on my YouTube channel at the moment - I'll have to add that little 'gem'!
    We are seeing more and more aluminium wiring used in the automotive field as well and yes, generally they are crimped, unless you have the aluminium solder and patience.
    
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- Francisco Maciel Barba
  
  September 8, 2020 at 10:00 pm
  
  Can you show us how you do this for different type of cables?
  
  Thanks in advance
  
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Lee

September 8, 2020 at 8:16 pm

Thanks, good article.
Lol @ do more testing around the house...

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- Mark
  
  September 8, 2020 at 9:47 pm
  
  Hey Lee,
  My wife was convinced that I would have to do thorough testing and kept pointing to the rest of the house.
  I felt sure that 'testing' the lounge was enough of a road test to prove it had been repaired!
  
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Parasuraman S

September 8, 2020 at 8:36 pm

Oh My God! We are clean bowled at the way you took the service up and solved! Very informative article with a lot of exciting experiences; very valuable too! Many thanks for sharing!

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- Mark
  
  September 8, 2020 at 9:49 pm
  
  Thanks Parasuraman,
  I'd say I cleaned up on this repair!!
  
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Albert van Bemmelen

September 9, 2020 at 1:17 am

You have no doubt a very smart wife Mark! Never heard about the NCV (non contact voltage detection) function on common DMM's before though. None of my standard meters have that but I do have one of those special current mini-clamp meters that measures flowing current up to 400A (AC and DC).

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- Mark
  
  September 9, 2020 at 11:46 am
  
  My wife encourages me to test as many household appliances as possible, whether they need repairing or not!!
  
  I've been collecting multimeters for many years, both old and new. This NCV feature is fairly common on most now, especially those coming out of China. It is used for AC voltage, but up until now, I didn't think it had too much value, but because of what Paris said, I'll be trying out the 'old broken wire in the cable' trick!
  
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Humberto

September 9, 2020 at 12:04 pm

Thanks for so interesting article.

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- Mark
  
  September 12, 2020 at 7:06 am
  
  Thanks Humberto.
  
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Yogesh Panchal

September 9, 2020 at 3:26 pm

Mark,
Good Repair!

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Mark

September 12, 2020 at 7:06 am

Thanks Yogesh

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