Karcher WV2 Squeegee Head Catch

So, the other day I was cheerfully cleaning my shower screen when, without warning, my head fell off!!!!

This was, as you can imagine, slightly annoying! But I picked it straight up, and popped it back into place. However, a few seconds later it was off again and back on the floor..

I am, of course, talking about the squeegee head on my Karcher Window Vac (model WV2), and not my own physical noggin - which remains cracked, but still attached at the time of typing.

Checking out why the head wouldn't stay in situ soon led me to a small piece of grey plastic on the floor. This piece was what remained of the latch designed to hold the unit in place, and it was easy to see why it had broken: To save a tiny amount of plastic, Karcher had added two slots to where the latch unit was meant to be attached to the release tab (see pictures). I'm sure it saves Karcher a fortune in production costs over the production life of the product, but it also severely weakens the moulding, and allows the stresses on the head from squeegeeing to flex it until it fractures.

I wasn't able to source a replacement catch. I'd have had to buy the whole squeegee head assembly, complete with catch, for around twenty quid. And it was an odds-on certainty that the new catch would fail in the same manner.

So I knocked up this rough and ready replacement. It's vastly simplified from the original, and screws straight in after a little bit of fettling. Hopefully it'll outlast the original, but if it doesn't, I'll soon bang out another in about 30 odd minutes!

I've also attached the sketchup file for any tinkerers, but be warned; it's pretty rough as I had some disappearing polygons that I had to re-draw, and I did this rather roughly as I wanted to get on with my cleaning!

Category: Replacement Parts