Take photos and save them to a laptop so you have something to reference on reassembly. Takes a lot of the pucker out of these jobs.
I did. Still though, this is my first time working with wire nuts, so I'm just nervous about messing things up, and potentially ruining this machine. It's not one that I myself have a ton of attachment to, but still, if I get rid of it, I want to make sure it works safely for whoever may take it off my hands...
However that's another thing, I haven't tested it since I got it. It's only now that I'm hitting myself for not doing so. The lady that I got it from said that it worked great, just that the handle was obviously broken. What I assume she meant by "worked great" is that it worked as intended, but the thing had seen plenty of use, and the motor is probably worse-for-wear. I say that because the inside of this thing is really... really gross. To give you an idea, I washed out the sound-suppression material with dish soap, and when I did, the water and suds turned pure black! Something tells me that wasn't just carbon dust, but I'm not sure. Idk if I'm going to try and disassemble the motor and clean it. The most I usually do with them is blow them out with compressed air.
Another thing to mention is that the cord is pretty torn up. The only spots where actual copper was showing was at the very base of the cord inside the cord reel. However, the rest of the damage was still pretty severe. So yeah, I'm gonna be needing a new one of those.
So yeah, I'm hoping all goes well and I can get this thing running well again, but at the same time I'm worried about this being a waste of time and money if it turns out to be a total loss.