Hayward Navigator is misbehaving!

[Sandia]

Our little guy is being a bit naughty and rebellious...
He used to do a great job, cleaning a perfect pattern overnight, but lately, he is only cleaning certain areas and ignoring others, he is also not going up the walls as much as he used to.... also, he seems to be getting tangled a lot in his own tubes and then just stops in the middle, stuck.
We tried taking apart the whole hose and laying to to straighten in the sun a few days, worked a few minutes, then back to pretzel mode...
There is nothing blocking his outlets or flappers.
I am not sure, but his antics may have started when we changed the pump to a variable speed? - it could also have coincided with his 3rd or 4th birthday?
Our skimmer won't allow the use of a Vacmate, so we have to choose between vacuum and skimmer, which is why we let him go overnight.
Any suggestions? Do we have to get a new Hayward?
We recently had the pool emptied and acid washed, so really interested in keeping it clean!
Thank you!

 

[borjis]

I have one and it worked great until this year. Nothing changed, but it also misses LOTS of areas now,
mainly goes in circles one direction (which twists up the hoses), in the deep end. I only use it once during the initial spring opening clean up.
Then use a robot the rest of the season for the lighter cleaning duty.

Probably a bearing or something inside the mechanism is off a bit, likely worn.
There are youtube videos of people taking them apart and putting them back together.

Amazon has the internals rebuild kit for $ 27

 

[kadavis]

How To Repair a Hayward Navigator or Pool Vac Ultra Pool Cleaner - INYOPools.com, probably gear box