You did the right thing by bringing it home, Chase. These XL-4000's are getting harder to find since Oreck discontinued the bags about 3 or 4 years ago. They were actually made for Oreck in Germany by a company called McDonald Electric. I have an orange XL-4300 with that same bearing problem. I have a vacuum cleaner repair manual from 1981 showing how to repair the XL-4000 series, and unfortunately even back then the only solution for the bearing problem was to replace the motor. You can use a little 3-in-1 oil and that will quiet them down a bit if you want to putter around with the machine, but since bags are NLA, I think it's just something nice to add to a vintage vac collection.