ghmitch

Nothing was mentioned to me by anyone regarding running the motor at half speed.  At this point we have been using the vacuum regularly since replacing the brushes and have had no problems.  In fact the vac runs pretty much like it did when it was new at this point.  The brushes we used were an exact match for the originals right down to the part number embossed in the plastic holders.  They were also preformed to fit the armature.  Thus I am not sure why one would need to run the motor at half speed in order to break in the brushes.  If anyone else has information in this regard, hopefully they will post it here.  - George

I just learned how to change the brushes in our old VitaVac the hard way ... by trial and error.  Hopefully this post will help someone else.  These tips may apply to Airway vacuums as well since they are the ancestors of the VitaVac.  These old machines are bullet proof and last next to forever.  The brushes are one of the few things that wear out.  As the motor became flakey, I suspected the brushes were the problem.  Sure enough, removing the rear housing by removing the four acorn nuts securing the rear wheels revealed arching while operating the motor.  The brushes on my vacuum are housed in clever little plastic holders.  So at this point a web search led me to the VitaMix site and presto, they had the brushes listed but not the holders which their site states are "no longer available".  So I ordered a pair of brushes from VitaMix.  What came in the mail in no way resembled the brushes in my VitaMix.  The size of the brushes themselves were the same, but they were much shorter and there was no way to install them other than to simply push them back in the old holders and I decided not to do that since it would wreck the motor when they finally wore down and jammed out of the sleeve at high speed.  So I very closely examined the plastic holders and found a part number.  I searched the web for that part number and bingo!  I ended up at Arrowhead Electric's carbonbrush.com site.  Their part number is "CP43XEG" white capsule brush.  So I ordered two of these for $20.00 plus shipping, handling, and tax.  The total turned out to be around $30.00 in my case.  When these brushes arrived, they were an exact fit replacement.  All you have to do is carefully pull the little tab connecting the wiring from the out capsule, they just sort of softly snap out.  Gently shifting them from side to side while pulling outward helps.  Then you can remove the old capsules by opening the metal hold downs and replace them with the new capsules, inserting the wiring connectors into the slot on top of the new capsules just like they were installed in the old ones.  In my case our old VitaVac is performing like new again.  Hopefully this helps someone restore their VitaVac back to life.