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So your Roomba is toddling along merrily, and suddenly it stops and says “Error 2 please clear debris extractors.” So once you figure out just what are the debris extractors (they are those two rollers on the bottom that sweep stuff into your Roomba) you do what you think you should need to do to “clear the debris extractors”. Then you start your Roomba again, and it starts toddling along again, so you think “Yay, that fixed it!” And then your Roomba says “Psych! Error 2! Please clear the debris extractors.” So you lather, rinse, repeat, each time your Roomba goes a couple of minutes, lulling you into a false sense of security, and then screams at you “I SAID ERROR 2, YOU MORON! CLEAR THE F*CKING DEBRIS EXTRACTORS”, and gee, it doesn’t even say “please” this time, how rude!

By now you’ve tried everything that the intertubes tells you to. These likely include:

– Removing the debris extractors and repositioning them and putting them back in

– Removing the debris extractors and inspecting for and brushing away any loose dirt, hair, etc. from behind the debris extractors

– Removing the debris extractors and taking a swab to both ends of both debris extractors, and to the indentations in the body of the Roomba into which both debris extractors fit

– Removing the “cleaning head module” (wait, the what??*) to see if anything is trapped in/behind/under there. *For our purposes, the cleaning head module can be thought of as the cavity in which the two debris extractor rollers sit, although it is of course much more

– Removing the battery for at least 5 minutes to have the Roomba re-set itself

But I’m going to bet that there’s one thing that you haven’t done, and I blame the many “how to” sites that don’t make this very clear (which is why I’m writing it up for you, so that you can find it easily!)

This thing is removing the yellow end of the debris extractors and removing all of the hair and other stuff that has accumulated in the body of the extractor.

This is what needs to be removed

 

Note that the endcaps don’t always pop off as easily as in the video, you may need to really fiddle with them, and really twist them and pull on them (but gently, you don’t want to break anything).

Once you get those endcaps off you will be astonished/shocked/grossed out at just how much stuff has accumulated back there. This stuff is what is causing the error, primarily because it is keeping the debris extractors from turning freely.

Ewwwww

You need to very carefully remove it all; I found that a pair of tweezers was useful for this. You will be amazed at the amount of stuff you will extract.

This is what was removed from just one of the two debris extractors

Then be sure to take a swab and carefully clean the underside of each yellow cap.

Reassemble your Roomba, and revel in the lack of it telling you “Error 2 Please Clear Debris Extractors”!

Of course my hope is that you found this post well before you went through all of the other steps, thus saving you from the maddening experience of trying everything else first only to hear your Roomba continue to taunt you.

Speaking of how many times your Roomba will tell you “Error 2 Please Clear Debris Extractors”, I finally realized why my dog Lily gets so excited when the Roomba starts up – I’m pretty sure, having heard the Roomba talk so much, that she thinks that there’s a little tiny person inside there! Seriously, she wags her tail so hard when the Roomba comes a’toddling!

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