They're hard to kill but it can be done. I had one for years and the metal canister finally rusted out on it. I took the latches off of it and mounted them on a 5 gallon plastic bucket and got who knows how many more years out of it. At the end of its life it would screech as it slowed down when powering off. One day I actually did get the magic smoke and that was it. Must have gotten 20 years out of it and a lot of that was using it as a wet vac.