A Duel with the Devil
Written: Dec 31 '03
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Pros: Lightweight, Good Price and Cleaned Well
Cons: Very Noisy (typical of Dirt Devils) Not durable.
The Bottom Line: I would be disinclined to buy this unit due to durability issues.
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| LuzonTS's Full Review: Dirt Devil M088520 Featherlite Bagged Upright Vacu... |
A Duel with the Devil, or the Dirtdevil Featherlight and the smell from hell.
I am not quite sure when we picked up the Featherlite right after we moved to Okinawa over two years ago. The price was right and the light blue case color was the first of its kind that I had seen and it matched our current living area color scheme.
I remember using a Dirt Devil at work and the thing always made a horrible loud screaming sound but It always did a fine job picking up dirt and dust.
The usual attachments came with it: The yard long flexible hose, the extension piece, Square mouth attachment with dust brush. There was also the long slender rectangular device for getting into cracks. Each of these pieces fit into various areas on the back of the vacuum fairly well but occasionally they would fall off when the vacuum was jarred to hard or it was put into an unusual configuration.
As well as a powerful 12 amp motor the Featherlite had a 25' retractable cord. I was able to get about a quarter of the house done at each plug in. What I did not like was that the cord kept getting tangled in the sides near the base of the vacuum which could be annoying so it would appear that I would be doing a kind of dance with the thing when keeping the cord out of the way.
Overall the vacuum did a fine job until about 6-8 months ago when it started to make a much louder and unusual sound and wisps of acrid smoke began to waft from the undercarriage.
I was in the midst of repairing another vacuum so the timing was ironic. Was it jealous of the intruder? Was it in fear of being replaced?
I began to take the vacuum apart section by section as I began the troubleshooting process. The belt looked a little ratty so it was replaced. Next I removed several ounces of string, wire and other odd pieces of stuff from the rotating brush. It was quite a bit of string so I assumed that this would easily fix the problem.
Bugger! Same horrid sound and the smoke still issued forth.
Ok now it was time to roll up the sleeves, we were talking major surgery. All the hoses and fitting were checked. The bag area and filter assemblies were clean.
Hmmm....My worst fears were about to be confirmed. I began the painful process of taking apart the motor section. Piece by piece, screw by screw until I was down to the various pieces. The Dielectric of the motor was fine, the windings were undamaged. Next were the blades upon which I found that they had been bent!!! Now how in the heck were blades that were encased going to get bent like this. I knew this was a dead issue at this point and a new vacuum was in order.
Up until this discovery the Featherlite did a fine job of sucking up the debris on the floor. It was lighter than usual but certainly not "featherlite". I am assuming that the reduced weight came from a lighter motor assembly which led to it's blades bending prematurely.
I later discovered after watching my Mother-in-law vacuum that she had a habit of slamming the device rather soundly into the furniture. A few tactful words and the situation was resolved and the Featherlite went to the scrap heap.
Fortunately the new vacuum I had been working on was repaired that same night and the round the clock cleaning operations of our household were uninterrupted.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 55
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Epinions.com ID:
LuzonTS
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 - Top 1000 |
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Location: asia
Reviews written: 103
Trusted by: 46 members
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