Fein Turbo II Foam Replacement

Recently, for reasons I shall not mention on this hand tools blog, I retrieved my old Fein Turbo II (model 9-55-13) shop vac from storage, where it's been for the last 13 years.  It's probably 25 years old now.  I mentioned this to a friend in passing and he said "Oh, make sure the sound-deadening foam isn't all falling apart.  You'll know it is if you get black foam bits coming out of the exhaust."  Well guess what - he was exactly right.

The Fein shop vac

Bits of black foam all over the floor

He said that happened to his Fein Turbo II and he fixed it with new foam.  He's a real tech guy and he had laser-cut new foam pieces for his.  I don't know how long ago that was, but he still had his drawings and leftover foam, so he laser-cut me a new set of foam pieces.  This post is about replacing the sound foam in the vacuum.

In the Fein owner's manual, the foam pieces are called the "cover soundproofing", the "side soundproofing", and the "motor soundproofing".

Disassembly was straightforward.  I'm usually a bit nervous about taking things apart, thinking I might not be able to get it back together.  Taking pictures as I go really helps.

Taking the float cage off from the underside of the lid

Revealed some crumbling foam

I replaced this later with extra pieces of foam

Some screws here ...

... and some screws down in this trench

Then turn it right side up and the top comes off to show some
really messed up, crumbly, dirty cover soundproofing foam

A closer view of the cover foam that typically stays in the lid

This shows the three pieces of thicker side soundproofing foam

And there's a 1/2" thick motor soundproofing foam piece that goes
around the perimeter deeper inside the unit that took removing
more screws to get to

I didn't get any pictures of replacing that motor soundproofing piece, but it was probably about 3" x 20" x 1/2".

The cover soundproofing pieces were about 1/2" thick.  Here's one of the pieces cut and being placed in the top casing.  I don't have dimensions for these pieces, but I recall seeing a YouTube video of someone replacing the foam and they had a free download with dimensions for those of you who need to replace your foam.

This piece fits into the underside of the lid ...

... like so, with the two other pieces that fit into the underside of the lid

Here's the cover soundproofing foam pressed into place

But there's a small complication

One of the original foam pieces was held in place in the center of the lid with four "push nuts".  I had to cut the original nuts out with tin snips and, since I didn't have any push nuts, I fashioned some out of a brass furniture grommet.

Close-up of the original push nuts.  They are on plastic studs
that were molded with the lid and I didn't want to break them off.

The grommets that I used to make new push nuts

New push nut holding the foam in place

The three thicker (1") side soundproofing foam pieces just drop into empty spaces.  My friend cut the three of them to different lengths - I was never certain why, but I suspect that's how his original ones looked and I didn't measure the ones that came out of my vacuum.  Each piece has two semi-circular cutouts, presumably for air flow.

Three thicker pieces in place

All that was left was to reassemble to unit.  As I was doing that, I was reminded of the little round foam piece under the float cage.  I was able to glue together some foam scraps to get a piece big enough to cut out the round shape and fit it into the opening.

The new piece, with two super-glued seams

The vacuum works great.  It has always worked great.  Many people rave about their Fein Turbo II shop vacs and it's no wonder why.  And now it's not spewing bits of old foam everywhere.

For anyone needing to replace their foam, I have three extra of the 1" thick laser-cut pieces - the ones shown two pictures above this.  If anyone wants them, I'd be happy to send them to you.  Just send me a message using the "contact me" gadget somewhere on this blog page.  Use a different browser if "contact me" doesn't show up on your view.