Monday, 27 March 2017

Rowenta DG9040 vapour cord & power cable replacement

Disclaimer: This is not a step by step guide but it does highlight some of the tricky bits. If you're not competent to work on this kind of thing then don't.


The iron comes apart fairly easily, I used a thin table knife to prise the front off. Incidentally this shows how to use a cocktail stick to align the nozzle with the hole in the front plate during reassembly

I removed the hose which was a bit of a pain and I wouldn't do it again. Leave the hose on and remove the top bit as below. Ease out the black and yellow microswitch and rotate it between the blackbars on the right because it will be tugged backwards as you pull back the main trigger microswitch in a few lines time.

There's a gap which allows the top bit to be rotated and eased forward

Then the handle assembly can be removed from the soleplate

Undo the cable grip at the back end
Unclip the cable pivot
Pull on the brown and black leads to the microswitch under the main trigger and the microswitch will slide backwards. Be careful to guide the black and yellow front microswitch through the black bars mentioned earlier.
Remove all cabling and unclip the steam tube.

If this falls out

Not to worry, it fits back here

The steam generator uses T20 anti tamper screws. I only have a bit in that size so I cut a slot in it and used a plain screwdriver for the deep screws

Remove all cabling and unclip the steam tube.

The cable cores and tubing need trimming to match the old one at both ends. The white connector and the terminals for the iron end come with the kit although you need to reuse the neon and the short brown lead below

When you've connected the leads to the main trigger microswitch, push it forward until it clicks and twiddle the black and yellow front microswitch back into position. It fits both ways but will only work with the button as shown

Nothing was supplied for the steam generator end so I reused the old connector. Joints staggered, soldered

and finished off with insulating tape

Reassemble the cable like this.
Note the earth lead going off to the right.
It plugs into that blue box and the spade is larger than the others, both sizes are provided

The power cable had previously been damaged so this was a good time to replace it

There are three tabs in the centre of the drum, depress and separate drum parts.
I reused the 90° connectors in the centre of the drum and soldered them

This shows the slots that the aforementioned tabs fit into

I couldn't find any guidance as to the length of cable so I wound on as much as possible.
It took 2150 mm of 1.25 mm2, note that the original is 1.0 mm2 and it's 450 mm too long

If you reuse any spades make sure they're tight
A T20 anti tamper screwdriver is recommended
The terminals are best made off with a proper crimping tool although I used a mini Mole grip
Parts supplied in a couple of days by Belstar Electrics

Update
The cable failed here, more or less at the entry point to the generator casing