Some filter

In August 2019, evidently feeling flush with cash, I bought a Tineco Hero A11 stick vacuum.  Convinced a stick would be used more often than a full-power, but also a full-weight canister vacuum, time proved me right.  Where before I dreaded taking the canister up and down stairs, I vacuumed more often with the stick and picked up multiple dustbins of cat hair.

On Sunday last, I began to vacuum the bedroom, but after just a few seconds the motor shut off, never to start again.  Over and over I tried after cleaning all the filters I could reach, only to hear a brief fluttering and see a pink light (or is it red?) flicker before both ceased.  

So naturally, I went and bought another one.  PG reasoned that if we did get it fixed, we would have one for downstairs and another for upstairs, and if we didn't get it fixed, we'd need a stick because we didn't want to go dragging a canister around, would I?  

By the way, you've probably already guessed that the warranty was for two years, and that it had run out a mere matter of weeks before the thing crapped out.

The new replacement arrived last night and it works, and I also learned something else.  After removing everything I could remove; the HEPA filter, the dustbin, the battery, the pre-filter and the mesh filter, I could see some cat hair behind the grate separating the motor from the exhaust pipe.  There's no getting to it, either.  Not with a bent and re-straightened re-purposed paper clip, not with a buttonhook or something PG has for knitting that has a hook at the end, and not with anything else I tried.  

I learned about TORX screws (you know, the ones where the head looks like a Star of David), and particularly that while we actually have a bit with a TORX head, it's too large to fit the screws in the HEPA holder.  You can see the cat hair and the TORX screws in the photo above.  

Now, the questions are:  (1) can that grate be taken off, and if so, how easy is it?  It looks like a complicated project to get it all apart, but it couldn't have been that difficult to assemble a mass-market product like this.  What's the trick to it?

Next, (2) if I do obtain one or more screwdrivers that will remove everything necessary to get into that blocked-off area above the motor, will removing that debris be enough to allow the vacuum to vacuum once more?  I've shoved the stuff around off to the side, which should provide ventilation enough to work again, and the motor still flutters and fails.

So one, it's hard to take apart, and two, it may not be worth it after it's done.  Plus three, we've already bought an identical replacement.  It should be good for oh, say, two years and a couple of months.   

Wait a minute... why can't I just break the grate and fish out the trash with those huge tweezers I found downstairs?  To be continued...

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I broke it and fished out the cat hair, and the result was exactly the same.  A brief clicking sound from the motor and a pink/red light.  I could have chanted incantations to every mythical Chinese god that ever was, and it would have done just as little good.  

OK, now I give up.  If their intent was to produce a product that would break down right after the warranty ran out, they succeeded brilliantly.

And I bought another one anyway!  I think that's going to be the last of the Trump/Biden stimulus free money.  Close to a thousand for a pair of garage door openers to replace the ones that came with the house in 1998... a service contract for the gas furnace that came with the house, about four hundred... a couple grand to remove two dead trees from the yard... a Secretlab Titan chair for my everyday home office, about four hundred for that... and a hundred here and a hundred there... but only $65 for the parts to repair a twenty-plus-year-old Weber grill instead of several hundred for a new grill, so there's that.