Brushes are clean, but Roomba stops and says clean brushes
My Roomba stops within a few minutes of starting it and when I press the button, it says "Remove and Clean Roomba's Brushes." I have removed the brushes and cleaned them thoroughly, but within a few minutes, it stops again and says the same thing.
Vacuums - iRobot - Roomba 4210 Bagless Robotic Vacuum
Answers & Comments
I decided to take it apart and see if I could fix it because even if something inside went "SPROING" and I couldn't get it back together, it wouldn't be any worse than it was already.
FIrst, remove the dust bin part and the brushes. Then, there are four screws on the bottom gray panel which have to be removed first in order to get to the gears which hold the brushes. I did not remove the little sweeper brush on the front, but I just slide it through the hole in the gray panel.
Then in order to get out the orange section which actually holds the brushes, there are four screws which must be removed. The orange section is attached to a blue section. This entire unit comes out by sliding it toward the area where the dust bin goes, being careful not to tear the light gray rubber gasket which covers the side.
Once that section is removed, there are two screws on each side. These screws hold the orange thing to the blue thing. Once the screws are removed, lift up only the side which has the white squares into which the brushes are inserted. These are actually the back side of little gears. There is a face plate on the outside of the orange part on this end. The other end contains a bunch of wires and I was careful not to disconnect any of them.
The face plate has six screws which must all be removed. Use caution when removing the face plate. Hold it up so that all of the stuff doesn't fall out. It has a bunch of gears, little brass looking fittings and grease. Take care to only remove the gears which have the squares which hold the brushes AND do it one at a time unless you like working jigsaw puzzles. I used tweezers and a pin to clean the "gunk" consisting of hair, fuzz, etc., out of the little gears.
Reverse the process to put it back together. Hazel, my little Roomba, played me a happy little song and immediately went back to work. She seems as good as new.
Thank you thank you! I even had fun taking the Roomba apart! Now that I followed the directions from rlewis 439, I think my Roomba is running even faster. Mine was blue/green and no orange, but it's all the same. I can't believe the gunk that was there. New carpet must do that faster than hardwoods and area rugs which I had run the machine on before.
Thank you! I cleaned out the gears and housing and it works great. Running 30 minutes so far. Going to command it to dock in a moment. I made the mistake of cleaning the gear housing lid with out noticing the little plastic washers. I think I lost at least one maybe two. I believe these are made to seal out dust, dirt and hair. So I may have to do this again sooner than later but I know where to go and what to do now. Thank you again so much for this post.
I have the Pet Series so I don't know if this will help, but it instantly solved my problem. At one end of each of the brushes is a yellow hexagonal piece. Pull them off and you will probably see a bunch of hair/dust up in there by the metal pins. Clean it out, replace the yellow heads and put the brushes back in.
Customer support gave me this information. Good as new!
Did this but still same problem...any further ideas?
Have routinely cleaned pet hair out of bushings on ends of brushes (as suzaddison suggests), and have had to remove the rotating front brush to remove hair jamming it up too. First time I have had to disassemble the gearbox that runs the brushes as rlewis suggested above. Worked for me, but do note that you get the same message for all the above problems.
I fixed our Roomba! It wasn't as hard to take apart as I thought. I was able to get most of the cage loose and then go in and clean it. I must have missed something the first time as it was still making a clunking sound and stopping. I found more gunk the second time and low and behold it is running fast and with much vigor like I haven't seen in some time. Roomba is back! My three year old is scared though...