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Dyson DC14 repair

Posted by bedhead on January 13, 2016 with No Commentsas , , , , , , , ,

I know repairing vacuums aren’t my usual core focus, but I thought this might help others that have a similar issue, and one of the Dyson vacuums.

We’ve owned our Dyson DC14 for over 10 years, and it has truly been the best vacuum that I’ve ever used. With some companies seeming to make products with an intended end-of-life cycle inside of 5 years, so they continue to have a steady money stream (or so they believe, as many will shift to alternate products, in hope of the product lasting longer), it’s amazing that this vacuum is still going strong. The only “hiccup” I’ve had with this unit occurred a couple of months ago. I started to vacuum our carpet, and everything sounded right, but some small and obvious debris seemed it was just moving around on the carpet rather than the vacuum sucking it up.

I shut the vacuum off and unplugged it from the power, then flipped it over to see if anything obvious was wrong. At first I didn’t notice anything, but as I was doing the “feel” test, a short hose (only identified by Dyson as “Internal Hose”, on their site) was disconnected at one end. This hose runs between the rollerhead and the main body, and is somewhere between 7″ – 10″ long. After finding the loose end of the hose, I could see an opening for this hose. I pushed the loose end of the hose into it’s connection port, but it didn’t want to stay inserted. I tried a couple of times and finally got it to stay reasonably well and finished my vacuuming.

The next time I vacuumed, everything went as planned, so it seemed this resolved the problem. As you can probably tell, this wasn’t actually the case, as it had the same problem again yesterday. I went online to see how much a new hose would cost, and when I saw the replacement item, it opened my eyes. The part Dyson sells shows a plastic tip of sorts, that is attached to one end of the hose. This is the same end of my hose, that was loose, but I had no idea the part I was trying to stuff the hose into, was actually supposed to be attached. I removed the tip that was still attached to the vacuum, and when I looked into the hose-opening, I knew I could likely fix the problem without any new parts.

The inside of the disconnected part had a number of nibs on the inside surface, and they were arranged in a spiral pattern. This told me the hose was supposed to “screw” into this part, so they would stay together without any clamps or metal screws. *As side information, the other end of the hose rotates onto the fitting coming from the rollerhead, that again captures the hose with no need for clamps. With the orientation of the metal backbone of the hose, as one end is rotated to attach to it’s fitting, the other would disengage, if both fittings were static. I’m sure this is why Dyson built one of the fittings so it was loose from the machine (the plastic tip I mentioned), which after the hose is firmly attached in both fittings, is seated in a port on the machine.

 

Plastic tip as removed from vacuum port, showing internal nibs (red arrow), and hose's metal backbone (green arrow).

Plastic tip as removed from vacuum port, showing internal nibs (red arrow), and hose’s metal backbone (green arrow).

 

After removing the plastic tip from it’s port, I was easily able to feed the hose in until it was completely seated against the plastic collar acting as a stop. I pushed the plastic tip onto it’s port, making sure it was secure, and that was that. I wish all repairs were as easy as this, which took more time to assess the resolution, than to implement it.

 

Plastic tip

Plastic tip “screwed” onto the hose and ready to slide back onto the port.

 

Vacuum with hose/tip reassembled, with the plastic tip located at red arrow.

Vacuum with hose/tip reassembled, with the plastic tip located at red arrow.

 

The plastic tip was extremely tight to it’s port, which seems like it wouldn’t rotate easily, even with motor vibrations. I guess I’ll never know just why this end of the hose was able to come loose, but I’m glad I was able to resolve the issue without spending any hard-earned money!

I hope this might help someone else that would also rather just re-assemble their parts, rather than ordering parts to repair their #Dyson. I know the DC14 and the DC07 have the same design in this area, and the same replacement hose, but other units may be slightly different. Also, when working on your machine, always disconnect the power cord, just to be safe.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.

 

Lee Laird

@LeeLairdWW