Kenmore Progressive Canister Vacuum

[fan-of-fans]

I got this off of Marketplace yesterday.

Seems to be in pretty good condition, nothing a good cleaning and scuff removing won’t fix for the most part.

However, the adjustable wand will not stay up without that tape on it that the prior owner applied. I cannot seem to figure out what’s broken, but the little lever that’s supposed to lock into those notches isn’t locking. Is something internal missing or broken?

I also am missing the dusting brush and powermate jr, I may look for some replacements on eBay.

I wouldn’t normally have bought this, except for it being the top of the line model, with touch control, dirt sensor and the telescoping wand with LED light. It has a quite long hose as well.

I see the lower/bottom of line models pretty often, but these top of the line fully loaded models never seem show up in the thrift stores around here at least.

I have this vacuum’s bottom of the line cousin that I picked up off the curb last year while going to some garage sales. That one is blue, has the shorter hose with one speed, fixed two piece wand without lights, shorter hose, and no dirt sensor. That one is in nearly immaculate condition, and has all its tools, and even had a new bag in it. However, it’s floor brush and dusting brush have the cheaper black nylon bristles, where this one has a horsehair floor brush, and presumably would have on the dusting brush, too.

 

[panasonicvac]

Nice grab

I'm really not into canisters but I've always liked these Kenmores alot. Not in my opinion the best canisters ever made but I think it's great collecting wise. At least I would've took one over the Intelliclean uprights if I had the choice between the two.

 

[fan-of-fans]

I like the IntelliClean uprights a lot, I have the teal blue bagged one and the purple bagless. I like the bagged better, mostly for the purple one because it brings memories as my friend’s mom had one.

Only thing I don’t like about the uprights is the attachments aren’t as good as the canisters.

Mostly got this canister because it was TOL and I was looking for the older gen TOL model. I also have my red one that was the gen after it and also TOL. That one has the big wand and weird tools.

 

[panasonicvac]

I own both uprights as well, I just don't understand why they've received such high ratings because they don't clean all that well from my experience. Their yellow bagged upright that's belted and the blue Phonemate made TTI distributed bagged upright I also have although received mixed reception, I find they clean so MUCH better than the Intellicleans at the time. Not to mention they're more reliable and simpler to repair.

Anyways with that being said. As much as I liked that Progressive canister, I would've rather bought a Panasonic MC-CG985 over it if I wanted a top of the line Kenmore.

 

[human]

My ex-wife and I bought one of these in late 2001. It was burgundy and was very poorly constructed with too much flimsy plastic. That's $375 I regret spending to this day. One particular weak point is the cheap plastic wand connection on the power nozzle. We went through three of them in about two years. That piece was replaced twice under warranty and once on our own dime. The last time I saw that machine, it was held together with duct tape and zip ties. I left it behind when I left her 20 years ago, and I haven't missed either one of them for a minute since.

 

[mark40511]

I had 3 of these. One Lime green, one burgundy and one sky blue... Would I buy another one if they were available? No... Although I did like them they had 2 major flaws that bug me.. The bag won't always stay on the collar. One time I had vacuumed for about a week and opened the bag compartment... the bag had slipped 1/2 off and everything I was vacuuming was going into the freaking bag chamber... from that point on I just taped it on...I also noticed that even with the HEPA bags, there was always dust in the chamber area..even if the bag stayed on perfectly...so something somewhere wasn't making a good seal...

The other thing is the quick disconnection connections would always ultimately short out.

I think this was from the 2004 to 2013 timeframe that I used these...