Sweet vac. Does yours have the cloth or wire hose fill tube?
Yours is nicer than the Heritage I once had. Mine had the cloth fill tube and was cosmetically in fantastic condition. What a nice cleaner it was to use. However, it had a critical flaw which I discovered when it began running unsteadily and making arcing noises.
To me, it always sounded a bit weak and slow but I just figured it was this way by design. Nope. Upon further investigation, I discovered that the joints between two neighboring copper commutator plates and their respective wires had been shorted together. This caused the two affected commutator plates to arc together each time they spun past a brush, slowly eroding and scarring them until the motor had serious health problems. This armature was beyond repair.
I concluded that before the cleaner fell into my hands, an idiot had improperly locked the armature for a fan change with a screwdriver instead of the special Kirby tool. This practice bent one of the commutator joints towards its neighbor and caused the short.
I had never seen anything like this before. Honestly, I was surprised it ran for as long as it did. Crazy.
