red_october
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2007
- Messages
- 71
The other day I found myself in a bit of a pickle. For Sound Reasons Unimportant To The Story, I needed to clean thoroughly. This involved quite a bit of vacuuming with a hose, so I used the Hoover Portable that I've been using lately, until I ran into a bit of a problem. The Hoover Portable, for those not familiar with it, is a nifty if flawed unit; squat and square, it has internally stored tools and a hose that can either be coiled up inside the unit or brought out one side for use; it is indeed quite compact and handy, but it's not particularly good, to be honest. There is no powered brush and the floor tool relies on Hoover's red rubber teeth gimmick, which means that there are, as near as makes no difference, "none" left. The hose is unusually thin and has a 90-degrees bend at the end, which means that it clogs up all the time. The usual remedy to this is to put the hose on the blower port and either put the other end in the trash can or in the suction port. However the suction port is plastic, and the hose end is also plastic, but the chassis, into which the blower port is incorporated, is metal. After the damn thing clogged up on the thousandth cigarette end that my horrendous former room-mate left everywhere (Don't get me wrong; I smoke too; in fact I'm so enthusiastic about it that I have an ashtray at every possible place you could be smoking. The thing is he was such an oaf that he never bother to use the damn things, or empty them when they were full, so the ends ended up scattered to the four winds), in attaching the hose to the blower port, I sheer off one of the little plastic teeth that locks the hose in place. There were only two to begin with, so what was a tentative hold as best went entirely away just like that.
I still had cleaning to do. Now understand a moment that my collection consists mostly of uprights. I do have some cannisters, but my best one, a Royal "Pony" (I hate that name for it but that's what I've always heard it called and I don't know the model number offhand), is currently out-of-service. My options were actually rather slim: An Electrolux so old it has runners instead of wheels, a GE Swivel-Top, and a Kenmore that looks like it's lived through a nuclear apocalypse. Not having a full set of attachments for the Electrolux and unable to remember for the life of me if it actually ran or not, and the Swivel-Top being, well, a Swivel-Top, I decided to see if the Kenmore would fire up. It did. It's attachments were also all stored on top of it, so that meant I didn't have to dig them up.
I noticed a few things.
-All of my power nozzles for Kemmores (none of which are actually for this machine; I have a green one of the right type; two later Kenmores and a Eureka) are all frozen up solid no thanks to the water I got in the basement last year.
-The Vacuum itself is immensely powerful. In fact it is the most powerful cannister by far I have used in recent memory. (Naturally excluding shop-vacs, etc.) The crevice tool is a very effective design. It eats up cigarette ends and for whatever reason seems to work much better than seemingly every other one on earth. It's a sort of "Duck's-Foot" design. I can take a picture of it specifically if enough people haven't seen one before.
-It works very well for being in amazingly poor shape. It's got whatever bag it's had in it for however long I've had it; the Magicord is broken (I don't remember if it's been removed or not), the dusting brush is missing, the hose is cracking, and I couldn't use a power nozzle ("Powermate!"), the plug looks like it belongs on a 1930s model, but it works so well nonetheless. The "Floor & Wall" brush works great on hard floors and carpets, and of course you can clean walls with it too! (LOL)
I do have a few questions about it, though, since I'm not knowledgeable about this unit in the slightest except that my grandmother had a similar one once and didn't like it because it didn't "Deep-Clean", whatever that meant in her mind. It also had a hilariously short hose which has convinced me that it is the reason that my family doesn't like cannister vacuums. My example suffers no such problem.
-Can the cracks in the hose be arrested or repaired, or are replacement hoses available? Are bags even still available?
-What year is this thing from?
-Does anyone have a picture of the dusting brush? I suspect that ebay will be my only source for one and I'd like to find the correct one since it fits in a specific space.
-I know this is unlikely, but is a replacement hose for my Hoover portable available? If not, is there a repair for the end?
I have posted a picture of the Kenmore in question. I have had it for years but this is the first time I used it seriously.

I still had cleaning to do. Now understand a moment that my collection consists mostly of uprights. I do have some cannisters, but my best one, a Royal "Pony" (I hate that name for it but that's what I've always heard it called and I don't know the model number offhand), is currently out-of-service. My options were actually rather slim: An Electrolux so old it has runners instead of wheels, a GE Swivel-Top, and a Kenmore that looks like it's lived through a nuclear apocalypse. Not having a full set of attachments for the Electrolux and unable to remember for the life of me if it actually ran or not, and the Swivel-Top being, well, a Swivel-Top, I decided to see if the Kenmore would fire up. It did. It's attachments were also all stored on top of it, so that meant I didn't have to dig them up.
I noticed a few things.
-All of my power nozzles for Kemmores (none of which are actually for this machine; I have a green one of the right type; two later Kenmores and a Eureka) are all frozen up solid no thanks to the water I got in the basement last year.
-The Vacuum itself is immensely powerful. In fact it is the most powerful cannister by far I have used in recent memory. (Naturally excluding shop-vacs, etc.) The crevice tool is a very effective design. It eats up cigarette ends and for whatever reason seems to work much better than seemingly every other one on earth. It's a sort of "Duck's-Foot" design. I can take a picture of it specifically if enough people haven't seen one before.
-It works very well for being in amazingly poor shape. It's got whatever bag it's had in it for however long I've had it; the Magicord is broken (I don't remember if it's been removed or not), the dusting brush is missing, the hose is cracking, and I couldn't use a power nozzle ("Powermate!"), the plug looks like it belongs on a 1930s model, but it works so well nonetheless. The "Floor & Wall" brush works great on hard floors and carpets, and of course you can clean walls with it too! (LOL)
I do have a few questions about it, though, since I'm not knowledgeable about this unit in the slightest except that my grandmother had a similar one once and didn't like it because it didn't "Deep-Clean", whatever that meant in her mind. It also had a hilariously short hose which has convinced me that it is the reason that my family doesn't like cannister vacuums. My example suffers no such problem.
-Can the cracks in the hose be arrested or repaired, or are replacement hoses available? Are bags even still available?
-What year is this thing from?
-Does anyone have a picture of the dusting brush? I suspect that ebay will be my only source for one and I'd like to find the correct one since it fits in a specific space.
-I know this is unlikely, but is a replacement hose for my Hoover portable available? If not, is there a repair for the end?
I have posted a picture of the Kenmore in question. I have had it for years but this is the first time I used it seriously.
