gmerkt
New member
This is a Kenmore Model 216.37045800. These were made for Sears by PhoneMate, a company in China that is mostly known for making answering machines.
This particular machine was only made in July '08 but was already on the junk pile. The serial number on these is in the same format as later Hoovers in that the first part of the number contains month and year of manufacture. This one had led a hard life in a short time and had been used to vacuum up baking flour or drywall dust, I've not yet decided which it was. The handle lock feature didn't work and the nozzle flopped around.
When I first saw it sitting in the four dollar junk pile, I thought, "That thing isn't very old." The power came up but the brush roll and bottom plate were missing. It had all the attachments and was otherwise complete, so I bought it mainly for parts. I was out on multiple errands, and because earlier I'd had a load to carry, I was driving my '72 Ford Custom 500 station wagon. There is no radio in that car, so for entertainment you're on your own. Mostly, I just think about this and that while I'm driving along and on this occasion, I remembered I had a brush roll and bottom plate at home in my parts.
This will be the fifth Phonemate-built Kenmore that I've worked on. I didn't write down the model numbers, but of the previous four, they consisted of three different models. The common characteristic is the white surround that goes on the back and sides of the dust compartment. The first was a blue Progressive with a bag. The next was a blue Durapower bagless with two chambers. The third was a sickly green Retraxx (so-called because it has a cord retractor) bagless with one chamber. About the time I was finishing up a recondition on the Retraxx, another just like it popped up and I got it. Good thing, because I found a previously unnoticed broken part on the first Retraxx. The second one was pretty beat-up, so I sacrificed it for parts. This is how I happened to have the brush roll and bottom plate for number five in the series, the maroon Durapower that is the subject of this discussion.
When I got the newly-acquired machine home, I noticed that it had a kinda weird feature. To me, anyway. It has a electronically controlled carpet height adjustment. All the PhoneMate-made Kenmores are kinda gimmicky, it seems to me. Sometimes they have the "dirt finder" feature; the Retraxx makes a bit of a deal about a retractible cord; now the electronic height adjustment.
This thing was very dusty and the meager filters were badly clogged. The failure of the handle to lock into place turned out to be not a failure of the latching mechanism but a broken lug on the motor case. Sigh. That meant I had to take it apart fairly deeply so I could get at that part of the motor housing to craft a new latching lug or boss. It's just as well, as when I opened up the fan case it was a mess. I blew it out thoroughly with compressed air, removed some ducting and washed it out, etc. Once apart, I also found a broken pawl on the other side that engaged a limit switch so that too had to be reconstructed. That probably happened at the same time as the handle pedal lock. An act of anger or abuse?
Once I opened up the fan case, in addition to the dirt I found a rat's nest of wiring and PC boards. This machine is loaded with electronics. When you first press the on/off switch to power up, you can tell it isn't a direct electrical connection. When you turn it on, you are closing an electronic circuit that then tells the motor to come on. A very different sound. Some of the other PhoneMate machines were just like this; the Retraxx had a direct electrical connection to the power switch, which was mounted low on the back instead of high in the handle like the others.
Anyway, the machine is finished and all back together. I downloaded the manual for it from a Sears site. The whole manual is about 49 pages long, but if you leave off the Spanish and French, you are left with about 16 pages of English. The first five pages or so are just boiler-plate, warnings, denials, etc, so that only leaves you with about ten pages of information, subtracting the one page for warranty info. What I wanted to know about was the electronic carpet height control. The manual was very scant of information about this. It only described what the five LED light positions meant. It didn't say anything about when to or not to engage the adjustment. After getting this thing back together, I think it works thusly: With the handle locked in the upright position and the power on, the electronic height adjustment defaults to the highest carpet setting (remember the limit switch?). When you unlock the handle and tip it back, you then can adjust for carpet height. When you tip the handle back up again, it defaults back to the highest setting.
Although I didn't have to buy any for this machine, parts for the PhoneMate-made Kenmores are considerably less expensive than those made by Panasonic. I did check to see if the broken part of the motor housing was available and if so, how much. Bear in mind this machine was made in 2008 and the on-line Kenmore catalog says that this part is no longer available. What more can I read into this than so many of these broke (like mine) that they are already out of them.
I'm simply not a fan of bagless machines. My experience is that bags work best for filtration. However, some people want only bagless so I get them to recondition and sell to them. Under-filtration is the main problem that I see with bagless machines. Some of the senior Hoover Windtunnel uprights have pretty large filters but even these get gunked-up fairly quickly.
The filtration in this latest PhoneMate/Kenmore is a joke. Yes, it has two chambers (so what?) but both have the baffle tubes in them ("Dual Cylconic Action" where have we heard that before?) which only filter out the big stuff. The real clogging dust goes on to a primary filter that doesn't even make the marginal category in my opinion. The size of this filter is 4.5 x 2.5 x 1.5, that's it. The exhaust filter is approximately the usual size of most Kenmore uprights.
Just today, my wife saved for me a Miele advertisment out of the newspaper. In it, they lambaste the bagless vacuum cleaner concept, calling it a "fad". I wish I could reprint it here.
A few pictures follow.
This particular machine was only made in July '08 but was already on the junk pile. The serial number on these is in the same format as later Hoovers in that the first part of the number contains month and year of manufacture. This one had led a hard life in a short time and had been used to vacuum up baking flour or drywall dust, I've not yet decided which it was. The handle lock feature didn't work and the nozzle flopped around.
When I first saw it sitting in the four dollar junk pile, I thought, "That thing isn't very old." The power came up but the brush roll and bottom plate were missing. It had all the attachments and was otherwise complete, so I bought it mainly for parts. I was out on multiple errands, and because earlier I'd had a load to carry, I was driving my '72 Ford Custom 500 station wagon. There is no radio in that car, so for entertainment you're on your own. Mostly, I just think about this and that while I'm driving along and on this occasion, I remembered I had a brush roll and bottom plate at home in my parts.
This will be the fifth Phonemate-built Kenmore that I've worked on. I didn't write down the model numbers, but of the previous four, they consisted of three different models. The common characteristic is the white surround that goes on the back and sides of the dust compartment. The first was a blue Progressive with a bag. The next was a blue Durapower bagless with two chambers. The third was a sickly green Retraxx (so-called because it has a cord retractor) bagless with one chamber. About the time I was finishing up a recondition on the Retraxx, another just like it popped up and I got it. Good thing, because I found a previously unnoticed broken part on the first Retraxx. The second one was pretty beat-up, so I sacrificed it for parts. This is how I happened to have the brush roll and bottom plate for number five in the series, the maroon Durapower that is the subject of this discussion.
When I got the newly-acquired machine home, I noticed that it had a kinda weird feature. To me, anyway. It has a electronically controlled carpet height adjustment. All the PhoneMate-made Kenmores are kinda gimmicky, it seems to me. Sometimes they have the "dirt finder" feature; the Retraxx makes a bit of a deal about a retractible cord; now the electronic height adjustment.
This thing was very dusty and the meager filters were badly clogged. The failure of the handle to lock into place turned out to be not a failure of the latching mechanism but a broken lug on the motor case. Sigh. That meant I had to take it apart fairly deeply so I could get at that part of the motor housing to craft a new latching lug or boss. It's just as well, as when I opened up the fan case it was a mess. I blew it out thoroughly with compressed air, removed some ducting and washed it out, etc. Once apart, I also found a broken pawl on the other side that engaged a limit switch so that too had to be reconstructed. That probably happened at the same time as the handle pedal lock. An act of anger or abuse?
Once I opened up the fan case, in addition to the dirt I found a rat's nest of wiring and PC boards. This machine is loaded with electronics. When you first press the on/off switch to power up, you can tell it isn't a direct electrical connection. When you turn it on, you are closing an electronic circuit that then tells the motor to come on. A very different sound. Some of the other PhoneMate machines were just like this; the Retraxx had a direct electrical connection to the power switch, which was mounted low on the back instead of high in the handle like the others.
Anyway, the machine is finished and all back together. I downloaded the manual for it from a Sears site. The whole manual is about 49 pages long, but if you leave off the Spanish and French, you are left with about 16 pages of English. The first five pages or so are just boiler-plate, warnings, denials, etc, so that only leaves you with about ten pages of information, subtracting the one page for warranty info. What I wanted to know about was the electronic carpet height control. The manual was very scant of information about this. It only described what the five LED light positions meant. It didn't say anything about when to or not to engage the adjustment. After getting this thing back together, I think it works thusly: With the handle locked in the upright position and the power on, the electronic height adjustment defaults to the highest carpet setting (remember the limit switch?). When you unlock the handle and tip it back, you then can adjust for carpet height. When you tip the handle back up again, it defaults back to the highest setting.
Although I didn't have to buy any for this machine, parts for the PhoneMate-made Kenmores are considerably less expensive than those made by Panasonic. I did check to see if the broken part of the motor housing was available and if so, how much. Bear in mind this machine was made in 2008 and the on-line Kenmore catalog says that this part is no longer available. What more can I read into this than so many of these broke (like mine) that they are already out of them.
I'm simply not a fan of bagless machines. My experience is that bags work best for filtration. However, some people want only bagless so I get them to recondition and sell to them. Under-filtration is the main problem that I see with bagless machines. Some of the senior Hoover Windtunnel uprights have pretty large filters but even these get gunked-up fairly quickly.
The filtration in this latest PhoneMate/Kenmore is a joke. Yes, it has two chambers (so what?) but both have the baffle tubes in them ("Dual Cylconic Action" where have we heard that before?) which only filter out the big stuff. The real clogging dust goes on to a primary filter that doesn't even make the marginal category in my opinion. The size of this filter is 4.5 x 2.5 x 1.5, that's it. The exhaust filter is approximately the usual size of most Kenmore uprights.
Just today, my wife saved for me a Miele advertisment out of the newspaper. In it, they lambaste the bagless vacuum cleaner concept, calling it a "fad". I wish I could reprint it here.
A few pictures follow.
