I finally had enough with the one problem my Kenmore High Performance "Kenvertible" suffered from. Its previous owner must have stored it with a non-OEM belt because the brush roll was bowed like a banana, causing the machine to vibrate. Argh.

Well, I had no idea how to repair this yielded brush roll body without downright replacing it. So that's exacltly what I did. Since I didn't want to spend an exorbitant amount on a NOS roll, I bought an old, rusty (but true) one locally and set to work restoring it.

The first thing I did was polish the rusted, torn up beater bars back to a smooth finish so that they wouldn't tear up my carpet. Next, I removed what was left of the old paint with a wire wheel. After masking off the beater bars, I sprayed primer and semi-gloss high-strength black spray paint. After an overnight cure, the result was an unrecognizably improved brush roll body.

Next, I disassembled the bearings, soaked them in cleaner and agitated out all of the old, contaminated grease. In went brand new synthetic grease. Finally, the whole roller was reassembled and installed in the cleaner. I re-used the brush strips from the bent roller since they are the stiff red ones and were nearly new.

Wow, what a difference! No more vibration, and the freshly services bearings glide with near silence.

Pics are below. First is a close up of the roller body in its as-found shabby condition. Then you can see the difference between an untouched and a polished beater bar. Next are pictures of the cleaned bearings before and after greasing. Finally, shots of the finished product installed in the Kenvertible.

Comments and questions welcome.