As my 535 passes its one-year anniversary (obviously) it has started to run for 10-15 minutes, then stop with a “please clean Roomba’s brushes” complaint. Cleaning the brushes (which are not dirty at that point anyway) allows the machine to run 5 minutes or so before repeating the complaint, then 0 minutes at a time.
The brushes are turning, though they did start turning (some) faster (I think) when I added a drop of 3-in-1 oil to the bearings. I opened up the gear box and there seems to be adequate grease there (and everything moves relatively freely by hand.)
I hadn’t found this forum at that point, so I replaced the motor without improving the situation.
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, my 535 was an inexpensive Internet purchase and iRobot won’t honor the warranty. But your answer did let me know what causes the error code and inspired me to pull the side brush motor out to see if that motor could be the one with the overcurrent. No such luck. The behavior is the same.
So I am pondering the relative merits of a repair (with a 90 day warranty) vs. trading this in on one of your 5-year warranty machines. Thanks for clarifying the question for me.
Even though your Roomba is just over the first year, have you tried to contact iRobot and see if they can do anything for you under warranty?
Normally when a Roomba stops and asks you to clean the brushes, the thing that triggers the message is overcurrent on the brush motor. If the brushes (and their yellow bearings on one end) are fully clean, the gears are clean and well lubricated, and the brush casing is without defect (no warped or bent plastic), usually it is the motor that is the problem. So we find it odd that it didn’t behave differently when the motor was changed.
Just to be certain, make sure your side brush is clean as well and that nothing is blocking it from spinning freely. You may have to remove it to clean debris that may have spooled underneath the brush on the shaft.
When you replaced the motor, had you replaced just the motor, or the entire brush deck?
If it’s still asking you to clean the brushes, it still sounds like the motor is drawing too much current. If nothing stands out and there are no other details to go on, at this point it would likely need to be inspected for repair. Please see the details of our repair service here.
