Another JC Penney Concept One

[gmerkt]

Lately, I've been on one of those purging binges. You know, where your workspace gets so crowded that you can't find anything and it becomes difficult to move around? Accordingly, I haven't been out beating the bushes for new stuff much. Today, however, I got my groove back and came up with another JC Penney version of the Concept One. This one is Model 2911, in a typical '70's color combo. In fact, one of the bathrooms in my 1978 house is trimmed in just about the same coloros.

This vac was sitting with a bunch of other junkers in the back of a salvage thrift store. At first, I thought it was a Concept One, but squinted and saw the JC Penney brand. It was dirty but in pretty good condition. When I first plugged it in, no action. I rolled it across the store to another "test area" and when plugged in there, the motor worked. This has happened to me a few times before; if an electrical appliance doesn't come on when you first test it, take it to another outlet and check it again. Sometimes those test outlets in the thrift stores get so much use they themselves wear out.

When I got the machine home, I pulled the bottom plate off and while the brush roll had a good belt, the smaller belt for the power drive system was off the pulleys. It wouldn't stay on either, because it was the wrong belt. Once I got the proper belt on, the power drive tested fine. Further testing showed that the power was intermittent. It would run most of the time, but when you moved the handle sometimes it would cut out briefly. I took the power switch off and found one of the wires broken off the spade clip; it had just been lying there against the contact on the switch. I soldered the wire back on and all was well.

The machine cleaned up nicely, with some scratching on the hood still visible and the hood decal slightly marred.

Since I already have a Model 2910, I parked them together. I guess that makes me a collector of these now, since I have two of them. Unintended as it was.

 

[gmerkt]

A little closer pic of the JC Penney 2911:

 

[tolivac]

The breaker or fuse to the outlet you tried to use could have been tripped.

 

[gmerkt]

Yes, that could be so. In one place I visit, they have a power strip with multiple outlets for testing. The indicator light in the strip is glowing. Yet I know to avoid the first receptacle in this strip because that one is dead. I often wonder how many people use that receptacle, figure the item they have is defective, and don't buy because of that.

 

[xraytech]

Very nice JCPenney Concept.

I have the exact same model, minecame from the Hoover Vault and remains unused, mine was the very first of this model made and it was in 1982, so yours is from 1982 or maybe 83 as I'm not sure how often JCPenney changed models.
This is my favorite color combo of the JCPenney mchines, there was a Decade in the same colors and a Convertible that the dark color was more red.

 

[gmerkt]

The "Shag" setting gives it away

I've got several Hoover machines with a "Shag" carpet setting which pretty much gives their vintage away. Thanks for pin-pointing the date to '82 or '83. Probably seems like a long time ago to younger people, but not to me. The '80's were the "lost decade" for me, as my wife and I were deep in child-raising at the time. I can't recall a single hit song of that decade.

Shag carpet also brings back thoughts about the earlier part of my domestic life. We bought a house in 1977 and the living room and two front bedrooms were carpeted with flaming shag. The LR/DR combined room was done in bright orange; one bedroom was dark purple; the another BR was a somewhat sensible yellow. We didn't have a lot of extra money floating around to "do carpets" at the time so we gritted our teeth and lived with that carpet for about eight years. We finally replaced it with something modern and much lower pile; then moved two years later.

When we were suffering the shag carpet, we had a used Kirby 512, I think it was. Those didn't have to say "Shag setting" on them; you just jacked the front wheels up as high was necessary.

That's like the electronic "dirt finder" on modern plasti-vacs. How did we ever know where the dirt was before they started putting the little red and green lights to tell us where to go??!!