Rant: I called BS on the "vacuum won't pick up, just replace the belt" advice for 20 years, now I'm split
So for two decades I've been the guy rolling his eyes whenever someone on a job says the fix for a weak vacuum is just a new belt. I figured it was a lazy answer from techs who didn't want to pull the brush roll and check the airflow. Then last month I'm in a customer's place in Plano and her old upright is barely moving anything, and I'm all set to start testing the motor. My buddy who runs a small repair bench in Garland texts me and says "before you dig in, put a new belt on it and run it on your own carpet for 10 minutes." I did it just to shut him up. Forty dollars and a five minute swap later, that thing pulled a full canister of dog hair out of her hallway rug. Now I'm wondering if half the belt jobs I've bad-mouthed over the years were actually the real fix and I just didn't want to admit it. On the other side, I've seen plenty of motors fried because a stretched belt let the brush roll slip and cook the bearings, so maybe the belt thing is just a band-aid that hides a bigger problem. What's your call on this, do you replace the belt first as a cheap test or do you go straight to airflow and motor diagnostics?