If this is your own vacuum for personal use, you should go see the vendor who sold you the cleaner. They'll usually have replacement parts or at least know of a skilled repairman.

Another great place to get obscure replacement parts for vacuums would be ebay. Or, if you have the exact part number - which you might be able to obtain from the manufacturere - you'll probably be able to find them for sale online through Google.

If you're cleaning professinally, my advice would be somewhat different.

When I first started cleaning professionally, we purchased a few heavy-duty industrial vacuums from the cleaning supply store. These were heavy and cumbersome to lug around. Not fun at all.

When parts would break, it would cause huge headaches for everyone. We'd be late for sites and we'd have to run around getting parts fixed.

Now, I just buy cheaper vacs from Wal-Mart for about $60. Since they're so cheap, I can just buy one for each client site and leave them there. If they get stolen, it's no big deal. And when they break, it's cheaper to just replace them and get a new one.

(I always have a few spares lyting around in case of emergency.)

And best of all, there's nothing to carry around.

It's not as fancy as having the pro model, but it's perfectly suited to the work of a busy pro with better things to do than fix vacuums. .

I hope this advice helped a bit with your vacuum question.

Any suggesstions. I live in east-central Maine and haven't found an appliance repair shop that will work on it.  Although I'd prefer to fix it myself.

Thanks,

Robert