Russell Hobbs rant

I recently bought a Russell Hobbs Pet Cyclonic 1800 vacuum cleaner (model 13944).



It worked really well for a while, but then one day it started making a really awful racket. Being me, I had to find out what was causing the racket, so I stripped the machine (mistake I know - I should have just taken it back). I traced the problem to the roller brush, so I stripped that too. This was a bit more tricky, as the bearing shaft had melted into one of the end plates of the roller brush. However, a bit of coaxing, and I was eventually able to get the endplates off. What had happened was that hair (probably mine) had gotten inside the roller brush and wrapped itself around the shaft and the endplate. Eventually, there must have been so much of this hair that it caused the shaft to heat up to such an extent that

• the hair melted into the plastic of the endplate;
• the shaft melted into the end plate; and
• the bearing no longer fitted in its housing in the roller brush.

It was the bearing rattling inside the roller brush which was causing the racket.

Hair melted into the endplate:






Where the shaft had melted into the endplate (this is the outside end of the endplate):




The bearing, showing clearly that it no longer fits in its housing (note the gap above the bearing):



Ok, so now I'd stripped it, so the warranty is no longer valid, so I thought I'd just buy a new roller brush. This was just the start of my nightmare.

First of all, trying to find the local agent was a mission all on it's own. The South African importer/distributor is Amalgamated Appliances and they do have a Website, the only problem is it's 100% flash driven so useless to me (I hate flash and refuse to install it). Through a service agent for another product, I managed to find the agent in my home town. He said he'd try to get it for me and let me know. Two weeks went by with no word, so I phoned again, and he said Amalgamated Appliances still had not come back to him. After another week, I phoned again, and he told me Amalgamated Appliances carried NO spares for this particular vacuum cleaner.

I thought, the Internet is your friend, so maybe I could source it from overseas. I spent virtually one whole day trying trace the roller brush for this particular machine, without any success. So I decided to try to ask Russell Hobbs UK directly.

Through a process lasting several weeks, I eventually got them to send me the roller brush. It arrived about two weeks ago. This is what I was wanting:



but what I got was the item on the box:



the turbo brush for the same vacuum cleaner.

Now what do I do? Of course I emailed them immediately, and a few days later, I received this reply:

Dear Sir



Thank you for your e-mail.



We note your comments and advise that unfortunately, the roller brush for this model is not available as a spare part. However, you may return the incorrect brush to our Service Department in Manchester where a refund will be processed.



We would also ask you to please contact the following regarding your vacuum cleaner:-


Amalgamated Appliances
P O Box 39186
Booysens 2016
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel: 0027 (11) 626 3415
Fax: 0027 (11) 626 1782
Website: www.amap.co.za



Please note that this company is not a Service Agent for Salton but they do sell and repair products so they may be able to assist you further with your enquiry.

This really bugs me, as I cannot understand why the roller brush is not a spare part. The brushes do most of the work for the vacuum cleaner, and they must wear out with time.

Also, I have to return the turbo brush to the UK for a refund, but the postage from South Africa to the UK costs more than the turbo brush, and will I get refunded for that??

From the local agent's comments on Amalgamated Appliances, as well as the negative comments about them on hellopeter.com, I'm not sure that it's worth me wasting my breath and chasing my blood pressure up further by trying to contact them.

All in all, a rather expensive lesson...

[update]
I started a thread on a local forum, to test the opinions of others. Much to my surprise, a member of that forum offered to see if he could fix the roller brush. I took him up on his offer, and fix it he did, within a couple of hours too! He made a shim for the bearing, and then rebored the roller brush to take the shimmed bearing. What's more, the very kind gentleman refused to accept payment for his services. It's wonderful that such people still exist.

[update 2]
On the way to fetch the roller brush, someone drove into the back of my car at a traffic light.

This has become a very expensive vacuum cleaner...

[update 3]
One month after the roller brush was repaired (used four times), I decided to open the roller brush to see what it looked like. As I expected there was a build up of hair again.

Hair on the damaged endplate:


Hair around the shaft at the undamaged endplate:


The hair removed from the roller brush: left from the undamaged end and right from the damaged end


This vacuum cleaner is clearly a very high maintenance item...

VirtualBox, USB & Kubuntu Intrepid

First of all, USB will not work with VirtualBox OSE found in the Ubuntu repositories. You have to download the compiled binary files from Sun. There are many, many Internet references to getting the USB system to work in VirtualBox, but very few make this very important point. You can get your VirtualBox system up and running using the OSE version, in order to make sure that everything works according to the book. After that, you can install the binaries from Sun, which will pick up your virtual machine and its settings with no problem, including the VirtualBox Guest Additions, if they are installed (which should be as far as I'm concerned, but getting those additions installed has issues of its own).

First off, you must add yourself to the group vboxusers (System>KUser Manager). Select the Groups tab and look for vboxusers (#121 on my system). Click on it and you will get the "Group Properties" dialog. Find your username in the right hand box, select yourself and add it to the group. Close the User Manager.

Now comes the magic bits. You now have to do some editing.

Edit mountdevsubfs.sh:

sudo kate /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh

Near the beginning of the file, you will see the following:

do_start () {
#
# Mount a tmpfs on /dev/shm
#
SHM_OPT=
[ "${SHM_SIZE:=$TMPFS_SIZE}" ] && SHM_OPT=",size=$SHM_SIZE"
domount tmpfs shmfs /dev/shm tmpfs -onosuid,nodev$SHM_OPT

#
# Mount /dev/pts. Master ptmx node is already created by udev.
#
domount devpts "" /dev/pts devpts -onoexec,nosuid,gid=$TTYGRP,mode=$TTYMODE
}

Add the following lines before the final brace (}) (copy and paste them to avoid errors such as unwanted line breaks):

#
# Magic to make /proc/bus/usb work
#
mkdir -p /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs
domount usbfs "" /dev/bus/usb/.usbfs usbfs -obusmode=0700,devmode=0600,listmode=0644
ln -s .usbfs/devices /dev/bus/usb/devices
mount --rbind /dev/bus/usb /proc/bus/usb

Save mountdevsubfs.sh

Now run mountdevsubfs.sh:

sudo /etc/init.d/mountdevsubfs.sh start

You now need to edit two rules files:

sudo kate /etc/udev/rules.d/40-permissions.rules

Add the following lines at the end:

# USB devices (usbfs replacement)
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0664", GROUP="vboxusers"

Now edit the basic-permissions rules file:

sudo kate /etc/udev/rules.d/40-basic-permissions.rules

Modify the first two active lines so that they look like this:

# USB devices (usbfs replacement)
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", MODE="0664", GROUP="vboxusers"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0664", GROUP="vboxusers"

(What you should essentially have had to do was add [, GROUP="vboxusers"] to the end of both lines.)

Now restart the udev service:

sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

If everything went according to plan, your USB devices should now be selectable from the VirtualBox. You can now install the drivers for the devices under the guest operating system.

Note1: you may have to reinstall the Guest Additions after installing Sun's non-OSE VirtualBox.

Note2: active devices used by the VirtualBox will not be accessible to the host system while VirtualBox is running. For devices such as flash disks, I prefer to mount them through the host OS, then access them from the guest OS via the /media directory (which I have as a shared folder under VirtualBox). This means both OSes can access those devices.

Note3: if you want to run a tablet under your guest OS, make sure it is working in the host OS and make sure it is active in the VirtualBox's USB filtes before you install the guest OS drivers. You may have to disable mouse integration in the Guest Additions to get it to work in the guest OS (guest OS main window menu>Machine>"Disable Mouse Integration"). My Genius WizardPen 5x4 (UC Logic Tablet WP5540U) works, but the response is a little slow when drawing. Judging from the way it draws, I think it's a combination of both the VirtualBox video driver and the way that the tablet's event manager is shared between the two operating systems. It is usable though.

Very useful links:
VirtualBox FAQ
Ubuntu VirtualBox Community Document

There were many others that I looked at, but these contained most of what was necessary to get my scanner running under XP in a VirtualBox