The Polaris 360 is powered by water jet that focus a jet of water of water on an internal impeller that is connected to a gearbox to drive the wheels on the Polaris 360. Similar water jets are used in the throat that picks up the leaves and debris in your pool.
The Polaris 360 originally comes with a small screen in the inlet of the hose that propels the Polaris 360. Some pool filters are set-up to use a two-way valve to feed pre-filtered water to their Polaris 360 and to the swimming pool filter. This two-way valve set-up usually works great as long as there is no debris in the water that is small enough to pass through the skimmer basket. Debris that will pass through a skimmer basket, in most cases, will be too large to pass through the water jets inside of the Polaris. The debris will then get stuck in the jet and slow the Polaris 360 considerably.
To correct the problem the water jet will have to be cleaned out and the best way to do that is to take the Polaris apart and blow it out with a can of air, the same stuff you get to clean out a computer.
Remove the top on the Polaris and you will see the inlet pipe connected to the debris throat, remove the screws holding the inlet pipe to the debris throat and lift the inlet pipe out. That will give the axle room to move up once you open the gear box housing.
Next, open the gearbox housing by locating the one screw holding it down toward the rear of the Polaris. Once you remove the screw lift the housing off and the impeller will be exposed. Next, remove all four screws on the corners of the Polaris to detach the gearbox assembly from the bottom case of the Polaris.
When the gearbox assembly is lifted off the lower case you will see the drive jet right under where the impeller was. Blow out the jet and the debris should fall into the area right below it, once the debris is in there suck it out with a wet vac then re-assemble the Polaris 360 in reverse order. Put the unit back in the pool and it should run as it is supposed to. To prevent the jet from getting clogged again it would be a good idea to keep the small filter screen on the inlet of the hose into the Polaris.
If you live in an area where a lot of debris blows into your pool you may need to clean the screen twice per day to keep the Polaris running right. It is much easier to clean the screen than it is to take the Polaris apart every time something clogs the jet.
Another possibility is that the belts that drive the wheels are bad. The belts are the types with grooves in them and if the belt deteriorates the grooves can come off making the belt slip on the pulley. It is a good idea to keep a set of spare belts available for when they do go bad, for me I replace them at least once a year.
