Henry Vacuum Cleaner Repair

hornetstinger said:
yeah I have a Henry +, comes with various heads, stainless steel tube, turbo brush etc.

The Numatics are the pro range, usually with longer cable, larger bin, possibly higher quality motor.
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I have a numatic metal vacuum in the garage. It copes with basically anything other than straight liquid. Concrete, wood, metal and even dead mice. It gets used for power tools too and with the exhaust having the same screw fitting as the input, changing the pipe over and you can light a BBQ in record time with a constant flow of air.

Numatic ones are heavier, all metal construction and take a larger bag. It also has the hi/lo power and on/off switches. I believe it's something like 1200W on high.
 
Not a Henry but successfully took apart and replaced the hose on my Shark pet vacuum at the weekend, saving a fortune in the process.

Wouldn’t mind picking up one of these second hand Henrys for the car, they seem to last forever.
 
The new switch arrived today, I had also ordered a plastic cable molding plate as I thought it was missing it but I found it inside the cable winding so I didn't need to order a new one after all, when I opened up the motor head I could see burnt wiring and signs of arcing on the broken switch connector and on the motor connections... it looks like the dodgy motor had taken out the switch.

Out comes all the wiring, I had some twin core cable suited for 240v and current draw so I used that and crimped on some new spade connectors, unfortunately the motor is shot and the brushes had fused to the motor plus the old 90s Henry motors are very different from the newer motors. I may be able to revive the old motor but the old carbon brushes will have to be drilled out from the metal housings. I did try to push them out with a screw driver but it was no good, they are too fused to the metal. I will need to clean up the inside of the motor and get the corrosion off the commutator with some sand paper and give the commutator a wipe with some isopropyl alcohol and then sort out the old brush housings and order some new carbon brushes...

I thought it was going to be easy just to swap out the motor with the working spare Henry motor I have but they are a slightly different size and the rubber gaskets in the motor house with not create a good enough air seal which means no suction so I'm going to have to see if I can revive the original motor now or find a solution to get the other motor going in it.
 
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So just done some research and it turns out a Dyson DC25 motor will fit a HVR200 series Henry vacuum. I don't fancy shelling out 35 odd quid on a new motor because I'm as tight as a ducks backside. I found a cheap Dyson DC25 1200 Watt motor so I got that for the Henry.
 
I've just had a thought...

Broken Henry vacuum cleaners regularly show up on ebay often with bad motors... now these are designed with air flow design and I had an idea of making a couple speakers out of a couple sometime in the future... it be so easy to put a car speaker in one and use the original mains lead for the speaker cable and see how it sounds... I reckon a Henry hoover enclosure could make a good speaker box, use the hose as a bass tube...
 
I am always fixing our hoovers when the missus gives it to me. 9 times out of ten it is blocked up with dog hair wrapped around the kids Lego. Zero mechanical sympathy in my family. :p

We still rock a Dyson DC07 that my dad bought new in 2001 and was passed down to me. It is a bit triggers broom however. Motor has had several sets of brushes, a couple of hoses as they split with fatigue and a couple of new roller brushes and belts over the years. The plastic has all gone a funny yellow silver due to UV exposure over 25 years but it still sucks better than anything cordless available today.
 
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Well I got another Henry today given to me for free, its a new model with the light indicator. It didn't work and all that was wrong with it was the switch. The good thing about these Henry switches is that they are double pole switches so when they go faulty you can still use the original switch if the other side is still good so that is what I did I disconnected the two neural wires from the faulty switch and joined those two together and connected the live wires to the good side of the switch, plugged it in and its working again. It took about 3 minutes to diagnose and repair the issue and zero spent on parts so that was a result.

I'm hooked on Henry's now. I also picked up another older Henry from 1999 that was in a right state full of water and the motor was shot, rusted and corroded so I cleaned everything up and now that has a Dyson DC25 motor inside it and it runs beautifully.
 
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Retro6 said:
Well I got another Henry today given to me for free, its a new model with the light indicator. It didn't work and all that was wrong with it was the switch. The good thing about these Henry switches is that they are double pole switches so when they go faulty you can still use the original switch if the other side is still good so that is what I did I disconnected the two neural wires from the faulty switch and joined those two together and connected the live wires to the good side of the switch, plugged it in and its working again. It took about 3 minutes to diagnose and repair the issue and zero spent on parts so that was a result.

I'm hooked on Henry's now. I also picked up another older Henry from 1999 that was in a right state full of water and the motor was shot, rusted and corroded so I cleaned everything up and now that has a Dyson DC25 motor inside it and it runs beautifully.
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Do you have one of these though?

www.mobilefun.co.uk

Henry Desktop Vacuum Cleaner

Keep your desk clean and tidy with this mini Henry vacuum cleaner.
www.mobilefun.co.uk www.mobilefun.co.uk
 
I got another Henry a few days ago, this one is in yellow from the early 2000s I'd say somewhere between the year 2000 to about 2004... this one just says Numatic on it... I got it super cheap but its rating sticker had been scratched off it and had a 240v plug fitted... I have a feeling its a 110v model that somebody had been using on 240v supply. I haven't had any time to open it up but maybe the motor will have something on it that will tell me its voltage rating. It needs a good clean inside and outside as its a bit grubby anyway. I'm a bit busy with other things at the moment but when I get more time I'll be able to open it up and find out.
 
An interesting experiment I did...

Well I had found a junky Power 6 vacuum cleaner, I only bought it home because I wanted the motor out of it and the cord. I plugged it in to check the motor was working and sure enough the motor worked and sounded healthy so out came the motor which is a 2000 watt motor and has the same diameters of a Numatic motor. I also salvaged the cord but also I salvaged the hose, the Power 6 floor attachment and wands. I chucked the rest of it in the bin so I got some good parts out of it for my Henry vacuum cleaner projects.

I had a spare Numatic hose end connector and I thought why not chop off the connector from the Power 6 hose and connect the Numatic connector on to the Power 6 hose which is what I did and it fitted nicely. I found the Power 6 hose, wand and the Power 6 floor attachment to be better in terms of design and feel when using than the original Numatic's one.

Here is when it gets more interesting... not only was the overall design better but it also worked much better when compared to the original Numatic Henry floor attachment and hose. This tells me there is a weak point in Numatics hose design. It also picked up much better and got everything up where as the original Numatic hose and floor attachment left smaller dirt particles behind on the floor.
 
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I had bought a cheap parts Henry for its motor housing and motor gasket to restore a rare 1997 Henry vacuum cleaner as the motor in that was shot and because it was an odd Numatic motor you can no longer buy, the original gasket was also different so I couldn't do a straight out motor swap without the bottom gasket for a newer motor.

The parts Henry is from 1999 so the housing is the same as the rare 1997 model Henry, I managed to restore the original motor from the 1999 parts Henry although the motor brushes were too worn on that to be re-used so I fitted that motor anyway with its bottom gasket from the Parts Henry and found some better motor brushes and got the rare 1997 vacuum cleaner up and running.

Now I want to fix the parts 1999 Henry and do a motor mod with a Dyson DC25 motor, I almost have all the parts to rebuild that one but because I used the bottom motor gasket to fix the rare 1997 Henry I now have no bottom motor gasket for that and Numatic don't seem to sell them separately unless you buy a whole new motor kit which is more than what the vacuum cleaner is worth. I have a dilemma here. It would seem a shame to scrap a Henry vacuum cleaner for the sake of a motor gasket.
 
I need to clean out my henry

He's a bit whiffy.


Probably because i still need to order some new bags,

Luckily its such an easy machine to clean


Just take his head off,


stick the bottom half in the garden and give it a hose down (inc the filter) whack a hosepipe in his pipe and give him a blast with some powerful water


let the bottom half, filter and pipe dry

new bag


Bish bash bosh
 
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I am getting some ideas on how I could make a new bottom motor seal by doing a silicone mold from the existing one or I could fabricate some kinda of fitting... now the bottom motor seal doesn't have to be air tight, its main purpose is just to secure the motor in place with the housing, its only the top motor seal that has to be air tight. Now this will keep my brain ticking for a while until I find the solution to get around it.
 
Retro6 said:
I am getting some ideas on how I could make a new bottom motor seal by doing a silicone mold from the existing one or I could fabricate some kinda of fitting... now the bottom motor seal doesn't have to be air tight, its main purpose is just to secure the motor in place with the housing, its only the top motor seal that has to be air tight. Now this will keep my brain ticking for a while until I find the solution to get around it.
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would be interesting as it's quite hard rubber, so probably not a ideal seal.

Have a henry so if you make one could be interested
 
hornetstinger said:
would be interesting as it's quite hard rubber, so probably not a ideal seal.

Have a henry so if you make one could be interested
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Although bearing in mind that rubber part is not serving as a seal its main purpose is the hold the motor in place its only the top rubber motor gasket that serves as a seal.

I have a bit of PVC pipe that actually fits on to the back of a Dyson DC25 motor so maybe I could do something with that instead for the Henry, use some JB wield to glue down the homemade fitting made from PVC pipe into the Henry motor housing then put the Dyson DC25 motor in which is about the same power and size as the Numatic motors 1200 watts. That will then leave me with a spare Numatic motor and another working Henry. I'm bound to get another broken Henry at some point needing a motor replacement so its always handy to have a spare Numatic motor or two laying about.
 
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