Shark handvac battery?

[Mark]

Hi group,

We have one of those shark handivacs something like the one at this site, only a couple years old.

(Shark) Recently it will only run a few seconds before dying. I'm assuming it is probably the rechargeable battery gone bad, but it went so suddenly I wondered if anyone had any other ideas. It runs fine when it runs, but just shuts off.

A new battery is about 2/3 the price of a new one, so I'll probably just replace it unless someone has a suggestion.

Mark

[Northe]

Mark,

We had the battery go out on our shark a while back -- it behaved exactly like yours.

Somewhere in the instructions it says that you're supposed to fully drain the battery periodically to keep it from developing a "memory." Of course we just leave it plugged in to the charger base so it'll be ready when we need it, so chances are we'll have the NiCd battery go out again at some point.

I can't remember where I ordered the replacement battery online nor what percentage of the cost of a replacement unit it was. I do remember that it was a bit of a struggle replacing the battery -- a plastic tab got broken, but it didn't ultimately affect the operation of the vac.

Incidentally, while we were waiting for the replacement battery, we bought a later model using a 15.6-volt battery rather than the

11-point-something one, and it provides substantially more suction.

Northe

[Jim Yanik]

Northe wrote in news:BR8Pi.234763$ [e-mail]:

Some NiCd cells are designed for 24/7/365 continuous trickle charging;the ones in my Dustbuster are,and the 1st set lasted 10 years. Digi-Key lists these versions,that is how I discovered them.