1979 Electrolux 502 "High Suction"

[paulc]

Congratulations

Jamie, firstly on getting such a great vacuum for a bargain price and secondly on the great clean up job!

One thing though, you will need to get a bumper for it. On the 500 series the bumper seals the gap between the hood and the sole plate. If no bumper you do loose suction.

I hope you manage to get the strange noise sorted. Does it look like someone has broken the seal on the motor at the fan end? If I remember correctly there is some kind of spring between the two fans, if someone has fiddled about with that then that may be causing the noise. In any case, hope it's an easy fix,

PaulC

 

[jmurray01]

I didn't know it sealed the gap Paul, thanks for pointing that out.

I have found a replacement bumper from the internet for £10 so when I'm a bit flush sometime I'll buy two. One for the 502 and one to replace the slightly worn out one on the 502S.

 

[vacu-finder]

I heard through the grapevine that the 502S had Motor problems.

 

[vintagerepairer]

They had no more problems than any other in the series before or after, as they had he exact same motor. For a while, some had a ceramic pulley fitted to the spindle which drives the belt, but that didn't make any difference to the performance or longevity of the motor.

 

[turbo500]

as they were lower priced than the 550 the 560-Electronic.

Well, the 550 and 560 were much later than the 502 and 502S. The 550 and 560 were the very last of the old style switch-on-handle 500's before they were replaced by the twin turbo style in 1986.

 

[jmurray01]

Here are the pictures you requested Benny. I didn't take one of the brush roll because I looked at it myself and didn't see anything different from the brush roll in my 502S (apart from the beater).

One thing I did notice (that you'll hopefully see in the pictures) is that there is a circle of rubber or something around the motor pulley...

Oh and when the brush roll is turned by hand with the belt fitted it feels slightly rough and makes a dull noise like a worn wheel bearing in a car, but apart from that it also makes a squeaking noise like rubber against rubber although I can see no such rubbing.

 

[jmurray01]

Picture 2

 

[jmurray01]

Picture 3

 

[jmurray01]

Picture 4

 

[vintagerepairer]

Turbo500, the 502S was on sale next to the 506. While the 502S was still in production, the 506 was changed to the 560 and the 550 went on sale too. So they were not much later. The 502S went on to be a Comet exclusive cleaner and finished production around the same time as the 550 and 560.

Jamie, the squeeking is the belt against the side of some plastic. The pully looks like it is coated in a layer of old rubber. The only thing I noticed was that in the first picture of the underside of the cleaner there looks to be a buldge in the right hand side where the roller bearing sits. This is very common when a roller wears out, as the bearing gets very hot and melts the hood of the cleaner.

 

[jmurray01]

So it could be the brush roll bearings that are causing the noise ?

I did notice one of the bearings causes a bit of resistance but I didn't think that could be the problem.

 

[turbo500]

Benny, my comment was not directly to do with the dates of the cleaner and more to do with the price. Jamie implied that the 500 and 502 were significantly cheaper than the 550 and 560, but there was a good 10 year gap between the launch of the 502 and the 550. Once inflation is taken into consideration, they were more than likely about the same

 

[jmurray01]

So just to recap, is it the brush roll bearings that are probably causing my high pitched noise ?

 

[vintagerepairer]

Turbo500 I guess it is the way one reads a message; what I read and interpreted from the original statement must have been different from what you did. This of course is always the bother with the written word.

Jamie, the squeaking is most likely the belt rubbing against a plastic surface. The likelihood is that the roller became faulty and as a result the belt has run to one side. Does the hood show signs of having been melted on the sides?

 

[jmurray01]

Nope, it doesn't...

I wasn't actually meaning the squeaking noise though, I meant the really loud sound like finger nails being scraped over a black board that is happening intermittently.

I am desperate to get it resolved as I love the 502 and want it in tip top mechanical condition, something I fear it is not in at the moment.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Jamie if you can make a video of it, I might be able to hear and tell. Could be air escaping from one of many places.

 

[jmurray01]

Oh trust me, it is not air! It's like metal against metal or something.

I will make a video of it tomorrow and upload it to YouTube then put the link in this thread.

Thank you for your help so far, it is appreciated.

 

[Southernhoarder]

Hi Jamie,
I have just been reading about your 502 and here is a couple of suggestions i have for you.
In my experience currently being a vacuum cleaner engineer if you were to get funny intermittent metallic noises you firstly need to investigate this noise in stages.

Run the machine without the brushroll or belt attached or baseplate and see if it makes this noise you speak of,if it does you know it is the motor,if it doesn't it could be that the motor isn't under load with the belt and brushroll pulling on the spindle or you have a faulty brushroll.

As a guess and without seeing or hearing this machines i would probably say the motor bearings are worn /dry ,now depending on whether it is too worn you can on some of the 500 motors grease the upper bearing by taking the rubber bearing cover off to reveal the ball race inside and you would need some multipurpose high melting point grease.
Being as the machine is a year younger than me it is very old lol

Another thing is you shouldn't oil,grease the brushroll bearings,these are self oiling and by oiling them you risk contaminating them or prematurely burning them out.
Look at the bearing holes and make sure they are round and not elongated too also make sure that if it has new brush strips which would only be copy ones now that the staples holding the brushes on to the plasic slide piece isn't protruding as i always have to cut the staples down to prevent them rubbing/scoring in to the bearings housings.
Also being very careful but by taking the base plate and very gently holding the bearings with your fingers (I can't stress enough be so so carefull not to catch your hand on brushroll or bearings because it bloody hurts) but make sure the belt is running in a straight line,it shouldn't be running over and rubbing in to the motor cover,if you have someone with you to turn it on and off quickly if need be that would be ideal.


The nice thing about these machines are they are easy to work on and fantastic machines so you will be able to sort things out easily with the right guidance.

Me personally i would have put a 5amp fuse in as you are right on the threshold with a 3 amp,it may be fine with the 3 amp but you only need a surge and it will blow the fuse.

I hope that has been of some help to you,let me know how you get on and if you can't suss it make a video and i can listen to it


cheers

Ric

 

[jmurray01]

Thank you for that Ric, but wait a second... You shouldn't oil brush roll bearings!?

That goes against everything I've been told so far... I always oil my bearings with every belt change and have had no issues.

When I bought the 502 it said on the eBay listing that it made the noise and in the same sentence that it didn't have a belt, so that would signify to me it makes the noise with the belt off too.

From what you said it is easy to lubricate the motor bearing, but I thought it was nigh on impossible ? Or maybe the 425W motor and 500W motors are different.

Lastly about the fuses, I've had a 3AMP fuse in my 502S for a year now and it hasn't blown yet.

My Hoover Junior which came today has a 5AMP fuse in it though despite being only 300 watts, so I'm not sure if that should be lower or not...

 

[vintagerepairer]

If a 3amp fuse blows on start up, you know it was too low. And as has been said, you could find it suddenly blows due to a surge. But as you don't know the history of the appliance, where it was stored (for instance has it been damp) , and so on and so forth, I always went as low on the fuse as possible. But that was personal choice. I do know that I don't remember anyone coming back to me to say the cleaner I sold them or repaired for them had stopped working.