Without a doubt, a desoldering station is an unbelievably overlooked but incredibly useful tool on the Electronics workbench.
My particular model, the AOYUE Int474++ has served me well for over 5+ years of continuous use.
Recently my desoldering station began to fizzle or rather puff oddly while removing some components from a rescued pcb. Whereas previously my gun would quickly remove a soldering joint almost effortlessly, it now required more time and patience than before.
Slightly stumped, I decided to take a closer look inside the unit. Much to my dismay, there was no discernible or obvious problems. Everything appeared to look and behave normally...or did it?
Upon closer inspection (with my auditory sense aka ears), I discovered the desoldering pump was no longer making the usual noise and exhaust sounds as it did in the past.
It appears that after years of constant use the pump had finally decided to call it quits (almost). As luck would have it..when I originally purchased the desoldering station, I actually ordered a spare pump in the off chance it may eventually fail down the road..(psychic perhaps).

Luckily, I found the spare pump still neatly tucked away in my desoldering cabinet..it's time had come!
Firstly, I removed the old pump. It was quicker than I thought. 4 Philips screws held the unit in place, while stretched rubber feet kept it neatly in the base with room to move when the pump was active.

After removing the old pump, I carefully installed the new replacement and reinstalled the rubber footings into the base.
I noticed the replacement pump had precrimped the positive/negative wires already which was problematic since the power connector could not be easily removed without damaging the system.
I decided to cut off the new units crimped wires by about 1 inch and simply attach and solder to the stations power connector. Thankfully, this worked perfectly. I added some heat shrink tubing and electrical tape as an added measure of safety.

The precrimped wires proved difficult to use so I ended up cutting the ends and soldered directly to the existing wired connector.

Once the new pump was wired and seated in the housing properly I realized the plastic crimp holding the suction tube was not tight enough no matter how much force I applied.

I decided to pull out my handy glue gun and carefully applied glue to the tubings circumference on the pump connector. This completely negated any air loss and allowed the pump to work at full capacity. I made sure not to apply any glue to the pumps exhaust hole allowing clean air to circulate unfettered.

The end result was now a new air pump that was working to full capacity which resulted in even better desoldering performance than previously experienced!

I did a quick test run with the new pump installed and the desoldering station performed well beyond my expectations.
Clearly the new air pump and minor hack to the air tube resulted in better performance and a quicker desoldering experience. Definitely a plus plus!

I'm thankful that the manufacturer had the foresight to sell the pump separately for a future repair.
Hopefully, I'll get another 5+ years out of this AOYUE desoldering station!
Almost all repairs require heat shrink and hot glue! I’ve found if you don’t like the shape of your blobs you can always warm it back up to molten with a heat gun, which smooths it out for better appearance and increases the wetting area for more strength. Nice crimps Darren! Too many repairs are done with soldering, which isn’t appropriate for such scenarios.