Parker, in a stationary moment

A few months ago, my wife retired, and I thought that getting her a new pet would be a good way for her to have some company at home – especially since I work in my shop a lot and also because I travel for work.

So we looked on Craigslist for a few weeks and eventually found what seemed like the perfect dog – Parker was an 8 month old Havanese-Coton mix or a Havaton – which is supposed to be a small, sturdy, quiet lap dog. He was unfortunately stuck in the middle of a family divorce and needed a new home. He came with lots of supplies and was “mostly potty trained”. We set an appointment to visit, and I could tell my wife loved him immediately. We brought him home.

Well sometimes you get a bargain when you buy things on Craigslist and sometimes you get something else. Parker has lived with us for a couple months now, and although he is adorably cute to everyone he meets, he is anything but a quiet lap dog. His bark could wake the dead. For a little 10 pound dog, he has a big and sharp voice and he uses it at the most inopportune times – like every time I have an important phone or video call.

Also, he is not very much a lap dog. Well that’s not exactly true – about half the time he is. The other half he’s jumping. And I mean jumping – Olympic gold medal level jumps – up the steps, over his toys, up to the furniture whether someone is sitting there or not. He jumps unlike any dog I’ve ever seen. More like a cat – he can jump 3-4 times his height with all four feet and land with high precision in precarious spots. He can jump off things and reorient his body in mid air to land in a position to make his next move – whether it’s to jump again or run. And of course he has the energy of a 10 month old puppy. Half his life is a series of leaps and bounds and rolls. The other half he sits quietly and is the most friendly lapdog you could ever want.

Parker has one other problem, and that is “mostly potty trained” really meant “mostly not potty trained”. Which leads us to the fixing part of this blog. Bissell, the vacuum cleaner company, makes something called a Spotbot, which is a mini carpet cleaner made for automatically cleaning small spots on carpets – the kind Parker likes to make when you are not looking. I saw rave reviews online – they cost about $150 new – but I did my usual search on Craigslist. There, not 20 miles away, is one that looks brand-new for $25. It says “works well”. I make an appointment, meet the lady in a parking lot, fork over the 25 big ones and bring it home. It doesn’t look like it’s been used much at all.

The Spotbot is pretty simple to use: you put in warm water and carpet cleaner, put it over the spot on the carpet, plug it in and push either the short cycle or long cleaning cycle button, and wait for it to soak, brush and vacuum the spot automatically. So I did that, and the machine soaked and brushed the spot nicely, but it didn’t vacuum. Maybe I did something wrong – I messed around some more – only to find that this unit is clearly not vacuuming. Arggh!

And so, 1 hour after bringing home my $25 prize – which is a tool that I really need, I’m taking it apart trying to figure out why it won’t vacuum. It’s not that hard to take apart – a few phillips screws – kind of ingenious design really. As usual I start checking things as I go – looking for loose or burned wires or something stuck in the suction path. I find out you have to take the thing completely apart to get to the vacuum motor. I pull out my voltmeter and start taking readings, running the machine while it’s apart – carefully. I figure out the controller is sending 120 volts to the vac motor. It must have a broken wire to or inside the vac motor.

After about 45 minutes, the Spotbot is a pile of parts with 30 phillips screws strewn across the floor. I have pulled the vac motor out, taken the plastic cover off the motor, and pried the blower end from the motor when I find the problem. Something has crashed into the side of the motor from the inside and broken a chunk of the thick plastic housing out. I can see there is a magnet stuck to the underside of the steel blower fan. The motor appears to be epoxied together from the factory and not designed to come apart – a non serviceable part. I finally bend the fan blades and pull out what looks to me like the end of a magnetic retrieving tool. And then I can see the fatal flaw with the motor – the magnet has rattled around and damaged the field coil. I can see the frayed ends of a couple of the winding wires. I briefly contemplate trying to repair the winding. But I would have to get the epoxied throwaway motor apart and solder the tiny winding wires back together.

And this is the point of decision. A decision that all of us fixers have to make sometimes. To fix it or not to fix it. I’ve now got $25, 1 hour travel time, plus 1 hour to diagnose in the Spotbot. It’s a $150 new item. I can see the value of owning it – I want one. On Ebay – a used vac motor out of another Spotbot is $40 with shipping. If I were really ambitious I could fix the field coil, but it would take time and unless I’m really careful at soldering the fix would likely fail.

Do I fix the old motor, buy the $40 motor, or throw the thing in the trash and fork out $150 for a new one? This is the dilemma so often these days when things break. I see things every day that have almost fatal, but still repairable problems – cars, trucks, HVAC units, computer printers, machinery, forklifts – and yes vacuum cleaners – all kinds of equipment the owners have given up on. This dilemma makes life frustrating for some but interesting for folks like me that know how to fix things.