Morris Minor Owners Club

Our Dyson DC39 vacuum hasn't been sucking very well lately so I took it apart and discovered that the gasket between the body and the head of the cyclone unit was breaking up and blocking the tubes - those 6 big holes on the outer circle should be more like the other 7. The two concentric rings of 14 holes should be there, and the ring of 7 small holes is where the securing screws go. It looks like the gasket is so thin that when it was tightened up it nearly cut through the gasket material and over time it has given way. Unfortunately it seems that you can only buy the complete cyclone unit and not sub-components, and the cyclone units are out of stock.

Plan B was to make a new gasket up myself, although it won't be straightforward. The issue is what material to use. The current gasket is a sort of thin (1mm thick), fairly dense foam rubber material, and I am racking my brains to think what to use to replace it. I did think of thin cardboard but than may not be compressible enough.

Does anyone have any ideas what I could use?

I bought a small piece of neoprene sheet online, about 1mm thick. You might get a larger piece to cover the diameter of the gasket.

Well there's this....£13

https://www.vacuumgenie.co.uk/dyson-dc2 ... xCITud7mUk



or using ebay I found 4 listed between £2.95 and £5.95
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from ... t&_sacat=0

geoberni wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 6:08 pm Well there's this....£13

https://www.vacuumgenie.co.uk/dyson-dc2 ... xCITud7mUk

or using ebay I found 4 listed between £2.95 and £5.95
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from ... t&_sacat=0

Thank you - that looks to be exactly what I want. I've been searching the internet for 2 days and that has never come up. I feel a bit of an idiot now.

les wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 6:05 pm I bought a small piece of neoprene sheet online, about 1mm thick. You might get a larger piece to cover the diameter of the gasket.

I might investigate the neoprene sheet option as well as I suspect the genuine part may fail again in the same way over time.

Thank you both for your help.

I’m not much of a Dyson fan. They perform well ,but for a ‘premium quality’ machine their reliability is quite poor...in our experience.

I've been searching the internet for 2 days and that has never come up. I feel a bit of an idiot now.

No problem, I obviously spend too long browsing for stuff, I've got a bit of a knack for it. You won't find any mention of it on the Dyson Site ....

SteveClem wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 7:21 pm I’m not much of a Dyson fan. They perform well ,but for a ‘premium quality’ machine their reliability is quite poor...in our experience.

I've not liked them since I was living out in the USA during my RAF days.
Our housing was furnished by the Embassy to a list that they approved, and they specified that you have to have a Dyson. Back then it was just the big upright models, which are so bulky they didn't fit under much of the furniture very easily, and only got within about 1" of any corner or the Kitchen units.
A repair/service if something needed fixing was a couple of hundred $$. Our's broke one time, I forget exactly what, and the bit that needed changing was about $20 from an authorised agent.
As an engineer it went against all my principles to a) be without the vacuum for a week or two while b) some repair shop charged $100s to fix it.
It took some effort to convince the embassy that I could fix it in a fraction of the time at a fraction of the cost, but they saw sense after a couple of days of emails back and forth.

Order placed for the 2-pack from eBay. Should have them in the next few days. None of them are genuine Dyson, but they can't be any worse than the original.

I must confess we have had our fair share of issues with Dyson vacuums, including the one upright that caught fire whilst it was being used. We contacted Dyson and they fixed it with a redesigned part, so they were obviously aware of the problem.

Thanks again.

KeithL wrote: ↑Thu Jul 16, 2020 9:56 pm Order placed for the 2-pack from eBay. Should have them in the next few days. None of them are genuine Dyson, but they can't be any worse than the original.

I must confess we have had our fair share of issues with Dyson vacuums, including the one upright that caught fire whilst it was being used. We contacted Dyson and they fixed it with a redesigned part, so they were obviously aware of the problem.

Thanks again.

Quite often these 'not Original' parts are exactly the same, produced in the same factories. Not guaranteed of course, but entirely plausible. As to the 'redesigned' part issue, that's common with companies. It even happens with large appliances or cars.
Some 15 -20 years ago, I was doing a 140+ round trip commute and I had a Corsa to do it in. One trip home the gear lever went quite floppy. I took the next day off work to contact the Dealer and got told it was a known problem of a clip falling off allowing the selector links to come apart. It was a warranty fix with a redesigned part, but it wasn't a 'recall' requirement....

The new gasket arrived yesterday and everything was put back together. Seems to work fine and it is definitely sucking more than it was, but it will get a proper try out this weekend.

Thanks for eveyone's help. Don't know what I would have done without your input.