Some background about my vacuum. It is a Shark Apex Vacuum (model AZ1501) I just purchased it in May of this year. For the first couple months it worked so well, the carpet features would essentially self propel the vacuum and it was really good at bringing up imbedded dirt and hair! I mainly got it for cleaning up pet hair off of my thicker carpeted areas and hardwoods.

Recently I’ve noticed my vacuum isn’t working as well as it has in the past. The soft brush roller light indicator is green when I’m using the vacuum but it’s no longer moving with the other brush roller. When I activate carpet mode it makes a godawful high pitched skipping noise, almost like what a broken belt sounds like.

I’ve deep cleaned all accessible parts of the rollers and filters with no luck. I’ve isolated the issue to the soft roller brush (black striped) located at the very front of the motorized head. There is a button on the side of the motorized head that allows the soft brush roller to pop out to clean it, but that’s all I am able to easily adjust without special tools. The vacuum is essentially useless and just pushes around dirt and debris without a properly working roller.

I’ve fixed rollers and belts on several old vacuums I’ve had over the years but the mechanics on this one are very hidden and there’s not much I am able to easily see. The screws are a couple different sizes of a weird star pattern and are burrowed deep into the plastic housing where the brush rollers sit. They obviously don’t want amateurs tinkering with this model lol.

The vacuum is still under some “5 year limited warranty” but after several video calls with customer service and to no surprise, this issue isn’t covered under the warranty. The customer service rep quoted me $90 to replace the entire motorized head of the vacuum which I’m not sure is worth it since that’s almost half the price of a new one.

I’m a little frustrated with the company since this vacuum has had minimal use (1/week) since May and this soft brush roller issue essentially renders the vacuum useless for cleaning floors/carpets. I’m wondering if there’s something different I could say to customer service to get them to fix or replace this vacuum. I did not disclose to them that I tinkered with it.

Does anyone have suggestions on where to go from here? I’m fairly handy and could try and get into the mechanics if it could be a simple belt fix. I don’t think it’s worth buying a $90 part when I could switch to a different vacuum altogether with less future headaches.

Roll comes on a second, then red light comes on and rolling stops. Ive replaced the roller belt and lubed some of the rolling surfaces to see if that would fix it. Last time that helped for 6 months, now it doesnt help. One side of the roller brush is slightly melted from probably getting hair on the rolling surface, but this has always been there and I cleaned it up this time.

I assume a current sensor is tripping as the machine gets less efficient? There looked to be one component on the board by the roller that was larger I would guess is measuring current, maybe could be replaced.

Thoughts?

4 years old. I was running it and it turned off abruptly. There was a clog around the hardwood brush roll. Now the motor doesn't start with the power button and I can only get a fraction of the speed when I engage brushrolls.