An Early "Kirby Birthday Present" to Myself!

[electrolux137]

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I contacted Dustin to ask about the Kirby 517 he had advertised for sale here. He offered the machine to me very reasonably -- "an offer I couldn't refuse!" So I agreed to the sale and paid via PayPal.



The machine arrived today. Look at the photos below -- I want y'all to see what an expert packing job looks like. If this had been an eBay transaction I would have given him a 4-star rave review!



Overall, it's in beautiful shape. A huge plus is the original cord in perfect condition. When I got the machine I could tell right away that the bag that's on it is bojack -- it's much thinner in weight than a genuine Kirby bag.



However, I just happen to have (ONE) model-appropriate gray Kirby bag. The 517 had a plain gray bag, not the bag with the silver speckling in the fabric. I've held on to this bag for a very long time, and now I have the machine to put it on.



I consider this an early birthday present that I'm quite thrilled with!

 

[suckolux]

Very pretty! I remember those pretty two tone cords

 

[kirbyclassiciii]

Charles,

That's a good score, that Kirby 517! The cord on it is a new black cord, with the plug ends taken from a Kirby Classic III cord.

~Ben

 

[dustin]

I can vouch for the fact that it is an -original- 1957 cord, gray with red ends. Glad it made it ok, and it looks GREAT with that genuine Kirby bag.

 

[electrolux137]

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Ben, it's an original gray cord. The gray color of those cords varied fairly widely. I've seen them very a very dark slate-gray like the one I just got from Dustin and have also seen them much lighter with a silvery hue -- an almost metallic look. See four specimens in the photo below that I gathered from my Mac. I'm sure I could have found many more examples if I had looked further, but I'm not going to spend all night on this.

Those Belden plugs are molded onto the cords at the time of manufacturing; there's no way to remove them intact and put them onto different cords.

The same thing applied to the color of the 516~561 bags btw. Some were very dark charcoal gray, some a more silvery color, some even had a blueish cast to them. Don't forget; I am old enough to have seen many 500-series Kirbys when they were new!

 

[kirbyclassiciii]

Charles,

I stand corrected on that.

~Ben

 

[tolivac]

Excellent packing job-better than orig!!!When you show the pictures of it unpacked-was trying to imagine the salesman setting the machine up for his demo!Too-the box marked contains eggs-maybe the package got "gentler" treatment!-It was kept away from the package smasher gorillas!

 

[kirbyrama]

Late 500-Series original Kirby cords

Speaking of the original cords for these models ; most of the ones I have seen appear to be an olive-grayish sort of color.

 

[kirbyclassiciii]

Charles,

I do in fact see that Kirby still made the gray cord (#192059) with the red plugs on it post-1966, since I see the male plug on the second cord in the second picture (in reply #4) has the angular middle part that makes it look like the Classic III cord only with a gray cord body.

If one of those #192059 cords existed with the 1983-later male plug end (all square-cut, no curves), that would be quite rare.

Too bad the original 562 cord (cream body/sirocco ends) didn't make the transition.

~Ben

 

[vacuser]

kirby 517

I WANT IT BADDDDD !!! your very lucky to have it, it is one beautiful kirby. i have one but not quite as nice as that one. i just posted a pic. of it under vacuser check it out.