Air Way Woes

[shag]

This is the Air Way I picked up on the curb last summer.
It smelled so bad of smoke, I cleaned as much as I could and banished it to the cellar, not basement, mud cellar. I had forgotten about it till yesterday. For some reason, the dirt absorbed a lot of the odour. I realized it was no place for a vacuum and brought it out.
Again, I tried it, a bit of suction and still sounds like a blender chopping concrete. I have looked on the inter net and can find very little about them or where to get them serviced, maybe I am looking in the wrong spots?
I called 3 vacuum service centers in the next large city. One had never heard of Air Way, the second said they could maybe fix or replace the motor, depending if it was one they could reorder. The third place asked the make again and said I have a giant paper weight.

 

[shag]

Air Way Woes

I can find bags on eBay, but what about the filters? I never realized there are two inside the vacuum. The first one, do you replace it, vacuum it or wash it?
I don't want to toss the vacuum out if it can be fixed, but don't know what to do with it or where to take it.

 

[scvacuumguy]

If it doesn't have a ton of suction, I would imagine one of the fans has worn out in the motor. This is popular in some canisters- older Filter Queens and Electroluxes especially. As long as the motor doesn't have any sort of strange smell coming from it, there's no reason the fan couldn't be replaced.

 

[shag]

It has a burning electric smell.

 

[piano_god]

Even though I have never seen an Air Way in person, I am sure it would probably have an industry standard two-stage Lamb motor in it.

If my assumption is correct, parts for the motor should be available through most (if not all) vacuum stores. In the worst case senario, it could possibly be replaced with a Ametek Lamb 116311-01.

Anyone know for sure?

 

[scvacuumguy]

Burning smell = bad motor 95% of the time

 

[djtaylor]

Don't toss it out....

Please, please, please don't toss it out. If it needs a motor you can find one on-line or from a vac shop. If it's too expensive to fix, sell it or give it to someone on the forum. I sold the base model Air Way Saniclean in my shop in the early 2000's. I wish I had kept one for myself, but did not. Now, they are out of business. Every time an Air Way shows up on eBay I try to get it. They were very good vacuums.
Justin