Briefly - with great difficulty!!
We bought a Dyson DC 14 just before Christmas 2009. This week, 30 January 2010 to be precise, my wife told me it had stopped picking up! I may be 71 years of age now but have always been a keen DIY enthusiast so I started to investigate what had happened. Having opened the soleplate I found the belt had come off the spindle - why I do not know!! I then proceeded to read the instructions and I quote "to replace the belt, remove the brushbar, loop belt around brushbar and feed through hole. Using back of cleaner as a lever, loop belt around thumb. Turn the belt 90 degrees, stretch and release over spindle. Belt must be free of twists as shown." The spindle is reachable with one's fingers but the gap in which to complete the manoeuvre is less than one inch wide. A virtual impossibility!! I spoke to the Dyson help line and was immediately told to try the exercise in the opposite direction i.e connecting to the spindle first - despite the enclosed instructions!! I said you could then only just catch hold of the belt through the hole let alone stretch it over the brushbar. It was suggested that I should warm the belt on a radiator to allow it to stretch and hopefully I would then be able to achieve my objective. The belt did stretch but I was unable to exert enough pressure on it to stretch it to insert the brush bar. I eventally achieved my objective with the help of a piece of plastic clothes line which I used to pull/extend the belt sufficiently for me to insert the said brushbar. The cleaner is now working, at least until it comes off again. Inevitably if something comes off once then it will come off again. At least that is my experience. Q.E.D.
Not exactly a customer friendly device but then I suppose if it was Dyson wouldn't get any repair work!! This sort of problem along with others I have learnt about searching the web probably accounts for why you find so many second-hand Dysons for sale at car-boot sales and local markets!!
Gerry, CARDIFF., January 2010
