DIY Frankenvac

Did you know, that a Dyson DC05/08 motor fits nicely into the casing of a Nilfisk GM90? It works bloody well, too. A big finger up to the ripoff bastards with their over-priced spares.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon
Loading thread data ...

Grimly Curmudgeon wrote

Fuck me, a saving of £200 plus !

Reply to
Jabba

I had an old sanyo cylinder that I bought in Jo'burg and shipped back to the UK. Motor went and I took it to a place that refurbed electrical goods, and got a rewound motor that required a tiny bit of filing to work perfectly. IIRC it was about £20

Did me another ten years before the hoses all went and I couldn't get spares.

ISTR it was a bit more powerful than the original too.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Really, is the original motor gold plated or what? Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Brian Gaff wrote

No idea. I looked at both motors, the 'official' one cost up to £250 - cheap one from Ebay £20. I remember Volvo parts used to be a similar ripoff.

Reply to
Jabba

I've got a GS80. Do you know offhand whether this takes the same motor?

Which is why I posed the question. :-)

I'm all for giving them the 'finger'. Usually, though, these spares suppliers are simply taking advantage of a "Supply & Demand" situation. What's unusual in this case, is the availability of a cheaper 'equivilent' part.

The motivation to seek alternatives is blindingly obvious. How did you manage to figure out that a Dyson motor would make an ideal replacement?

Reply to
Johny B Good

Ttbomk, it's the same motor head casing, so yes, it should work.

I found the Dyson measurements online from an Aus supplier and took it from there. The spur was the ebay price of an 'original Henley Dyson YDK' motor - £16. I'm unsure of the motor origins, likely Shengzhou or someplace like that, but it seems well-enough made. If it lasts a few years, I'll be happy with it. It fits on the rubber bumper at the bottom, fits the round casing nicely, and is ~20mm short, so a piece of 28mm pex pipe fits over the top bearing housing and slots perfectly into place under the original top plate that covered the old motor. It was only when I put it all back together I realised I'd neglected to ensure an anti-torque retention internally, so I'll do that with a blob or two of mastic and a couple of bits of rubber 'twixt fan housing and casing.

formatting link

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

At less than 10% the cost of an 'original part', I'd be happy too!

Thanks for that insight into your project. Although mine doesn't show any symptoms of impending motor wear, it's always handy to know that a cost effective method of repair exists to save it ending its days in the electrical goods skip at the municipal dump.

Interesting little video. However, I thought it was a bit on the short side. I think you should have included footage of it working, fully assembled, to give some idea of its improved 'Suck Power'.

The most useful thing I got from the video was in the description where you mentioned the 900 and 1200 watt ratings used by the original motors versus the humungous 1600 watt rating of the replacement.

Checking the rating plate on the GS80 shows a more modest 700 watt rating. I'm not so sure that more than doubling the motor rating is going to necessarilly halve my 'vacuuming up time'.

The exhaust air temperature is warm enough already with the 700 watt motor. Fitting a 1600 watt motor is going to turn it into a rather noisy fan heater not too far behind my little 2KW fan heater in terms of heating efficacy!

I guess it's just a matter of looking out for a more modestly rated substitute motor if and when the time comes to replace it (maybe something in the region of 800 to 1000 watts?).

My dad managed to liberate at least three of these machines from his place of employment before he retired (A large finance house with water cooled IBM mainframes where he was in charge of the air conditioning plant where his employers were only too happy to gift him such kit).

My youngest brother got one whilst my dad held onto the other. Afaik, they're still in good working order. The one at my dad's house is now effectively a spare since we had to move him into a home early in the year on account of his worsening dementia.

The build quality of these cleaners does make them more worthy of repair when the parts costs can be so dramatically reduced. I'll be dropping my brother an email to let him know that even if the motor burns out, it'll still be well worth repairing (or at the very least, give me first refusal of its remains).

When I ordered a replacement rubber elbow joint and locking gasket for the hose assembly a few years back, I also bought a pack of disposable paper dust collection bags which I've long since used up. However, the design rather neatly allows you to use _similar_ disposable bags made for more common makes of vacuum cleaner which reduces the running costs to that of a cheap vacuum cleaner.

The unpluggable mains flex is a nice feature (not normally found on the 'built down to a price plastic tat' of modern day cleaners) which I rather appreciated since it facilitated removing the twists that eventually accumulate every time it's dragged in and out of the spare bedroom (aka, my stock room) where it's normally stored and more or less permanently kept plugged into the mains.

Your 'Frankenvac' repair is well appreciated. :-)

Reply to
Johny B Good

I'll disassemble it to install the aforementioned anti-torque anchors, and will take some pics then. I'll put up a video of it working in the meantime - did the back room with it today and it's working nicely - fairly quietly too, once the whole cleaner was assembled with new bag, clean liner and exit filters in place. I need a new hose - the old one is kinked badly in a couple of spots and has got burned/melted where it was laid over an electric fire at one point. Genuine Nilfisk hoses would make your eyes water, so a cheapy will do until I espy a NOS hose somewhere. The 1600W rating is likely at max mains UK voltage of 240 - here, it's on 230, so less power. The original 900W motor always acquitted itself well, and when it was upgraded to a 1200W, the difference wasns't really all that noticeable. These machines are fairly well designed for airflow internally, so make the best of what they've got. The upshot is, it works well, isn't noisy and sucks excellently. I've been keeping my eyes open for another one, but scored a later Nilfisk, an HDS2000, which comes with HEPA filtration (HEPA was an expensive option for these earlier models) and I'm looking forward to giving that a once-over. I think that also uses a fairly standard-sized motor in a Nilfisk container, so might eventually be due a Dyson job too.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

Aha. What I've found so far is the 1600W is somewhat effective, as it's probably not as efficient per watt as the Nilfisk originals, but in the Nilfisk casing, which has some nice design touches, it's making good use of its power, as far as can be reasonably expected. I'm awaiting a new (pattern Qualtex) hose, as the old one is in the habit of collapsing and suffered fire damage. Once that arrives, I'll video the suction performance. It's not noisy at all - with all the filters in place, it's not any noisier than I recall the original being.

Yes, the output air is definitely warmer than it used to be, but I can live with that. It's not on for hours on end. My aim is one cleaner per room - either one of these or equivalent - and each will be on for five minutes.

I've no doubt some will be found, somewhere. Most especially when the new regs start to affect replacement Chinese motors.

As you'll see from mine, the quality of the lower casing leaves something to be desired, but they're still available as new parts - at a price. I just repaired mine. If I find more for spares, I'll grab them.

I found a source or v. cheap fleece dustbags

formatting link
- fiver a set of five, delivered. That's within Ireland, not sure about postage to UK. He's the cheapest I found anywhere.
formatting link

More pictures here...

formatting link

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

Ah, I was expecting to see similar build quality to my GS 80 (the GST variant). The picture suggests a plastic molded base can, rather than the more durable aluminium can[1] of the GS 80 (with seperate tri-cycle undercarriage assembly - single castor wheel).

I've googled for links to pictures or manuals on this model but it's rather like a search for the Holy Grail. The best I could come up with is a video of the "Nilfisk GS80 Vacuum Cleaner 1981-1984" which is revealed to be the GSD variant near the end of the video.

The model shown in the video, nevertheless, is a dead ringer for mine. Take note of the simplicity and ruggedness of the design when the unit is taken apart to reveal the motorhead, top can filter and dustbag can. It would have been a nice touch if the guy doing the video had also unplugged the mains cord to further demonstrate its simplicity (no problematic cord retraction mechanism such as I saw on a later "All Plastic" Nilfisk modern day cleaner shown in a motor replacement demonstration video (Oh, the screws, the endless screws!!).

Interestingly, I noticed the use of an integrated inlet coupling on the dustbag. A totally unnecessary expense on something so disposable that is forgone entirely by the GST model where a nylon retaining ring (a suitable O ring could be used as a substitue) is used to retain the open ended bag (Nilfisk originals or much cheaper Hoover/Electrolux - or whatever brand looks similar enough to do the job).

I noted the very high price of replacement motors for this model range (£300 / 610 aussy dollars). Perhaps it's for the complete clip on motor top can?

Incidently, I think the earlier 700W motors did have servicable brush gear (I've noted carbon brush sets, obsolete, on some spares web sites). I'd have to strip the motor can in order to check but ICBA to go this far.

These machines do have a reputation for being quiet but only by the standards of typical vacuum cleaner noise levels, it's all relative. As a fan heater though, it would make a very noisy substitute indeed!

Your pragmatic approach to keeping that more plasticy Nilfisk going by using a cheap substitute Chinese motor seems a perfect quality match to my mind. :-))

[1] I did see mention of conductive hoses as standard for use in ESD senstive areas so I suppose the use of aluminium over plastic was more or less mandated in this design. It's probably why I've never caused any ESD induced damage to the many PCs, and parts thereof, that I've had the displeasure to decontaminate of dust and fluff over the past two decades or so.

However. since it's a double insulated cleaner with no earth conductor in the mains cord, I have to assume the use of a high resistance connection to the neutral (the plug is an earthless IEC connector which maintains polarity of the Live and Neutral connection to the wall socket).

Even a contact via a 500K or so safety resistor with 240v rms ac would be far more preferable compared to the risk of several kilovolts of esd shock hazard that could otherwise exist. From the point of view of earth leakage requirement, a high resistance connection to either Live or Neutral would suffice, allowing the continued use of the more flexible 2 core mains lead.

If the polarity of the mains connection couldn't be guaranteed by design, I'd imagine the use of 2 or 3 safety resistors to provide a half mains voltage leakage path. In this case, polarity is maintained by design leaving only miswired wiring of the wall outlets as an acceptable risk of Hi-Z mains voltage contact.

Reply to
Johny B Good

I'm not sure of the earlier motorhead internals, but going by observation, Nilfisk didn't chuck away a perfectly good design at the heart of the machine. You can see their pragmatism on their industrial versions, where one, two and (I'm sure I saw) three motorheads are used on progressively larger canisters. This used the same motorheads dating back to the 80s.

It was always relatively quiet, but especially with the 900W motor as fitted originally. The 1200 was a bit noisier, but not noticeably suckier. This Chinese room-warmer isn't too noisy at all, sitting there being Nilfisked into some semblance of good manners. It's as I suspected and hoped I would be proved right on - the internal design of the Nilfisk and the attention to detail of the design means I can get away with an inherently less efficient and noisier motor and the overall character of the machine is unchanged, as the design wins out.

Hah. I just took delivery of an ex-hospital Nilfisk and finished cleaning it out. The smell of the internals was enough to make a dog barf. It was like 1000 sweaty feet, and I was reasonably careful working on it until everything was thoroughly disinfected / scrubbed. All back together now and working fine. It certainly shows the new EU regs to have a point; 1100W and could suck bowling balls through a straw. This has what appears to be a physically smaller motor inside the removeable motor cartridge - easy to replace as a selling point if the operator just happened to have a spare motor kicking around. Gawd knows the price of them, though. Hopefully, I won't have to replace this one for a while, even though it's done a life of commercial service so far, it might have a few years left in it yet. It's also incredibly quiet - two speeds; the higher speed being fairly quiet but the low speed being very much so. Noise levels of the new machine were quoted as being 55/44dB(A) iirc; allowing for marketing BS and lab test conditions, it is in reality a quiet machine. It was sold as such for daytime use in hospitals, libraries, etc.

This one will do for the back room :)

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.