British hoover purepower. In the usa!

[jmurray01]

"Also the slim brushroll - God alone knows what their idea was with that design." Oh that was the worst bit, which is saying something.

I don't know why they ever stopped using the activator. Well, actually I do. It was no longer effective because of the constantly increasing wattages of the PP motors making it spin faster.

The activator was only REALLY effective on the Turbopower 1, but still pretty good on the Turbopower 2/1000/3, however completely useless on the Purepower ranges.

 

[rolls_rapide]

My 1500 Watt machine had a large diameter brushroll, minus the activator nodules. Same with mum's 1800W.

The 1350 Watt Vortex had activator with nodules.

The interesting thing is, the slim brushroll on the modern machines, looks like a throwback to pre-1926, the year the agitator with beater bars appeared.

This is a Hoover 541 with slim brushroll.

 

[thekirbylover]

well i think its down to personal taste we should be happy that vacuumlover1 has got a machine he likes we all have different tastes

 

[thevacuumlover1]

To twocvbloke

my house is up to par for a 5000 watt transformer. I need a transformer because the house 240v outlets are misshapen and would be a bitch to rewire and take out and then bring the wiring up through the basement. Some crazy electrician recommended that i buy a UK socket and wire it to my wall. He told me this would cost 400-500 dollars for a electrician to set it up and run wires through my wall, No thanks lol. I'll just wait till the transformer comes.

 

[alexhoovers94]

Another reason I "believe" candy took away the activator brushroll, along with other features like the bag light and autosense, is because it wasn't there design, it was "hoovers" so they had to take all hoovers little nifty features off there vacuums, I guss for copy right purposes when they got bought out, but not 100% sure.

well that is what I heard anyway.

 

[twocvbloke]

Gotta love it when two companies own one name, I wonder if they'll end up with one of the two Hoovers being renamed like how Aerus did from Electrolux when Electrolux bought back their name, just to stop the confusion... :&#92

 

[vintagerepairer]

I am not sure I agree with that Alex, because Candy took over Hoover around 1993, but the Autosense feature carried on long afterwards and right into the Hoover Purepower, because in the original 1997 Purepower collection there was an Autosense model. Personally, I always thought that the removal of certain features was a way of bringing down costs and / or introducing a lower specification cleaner to the market.

What needs to be remembered is that so much has changed to many aspects of life in the last fifteen or so years, due to the internet. This has affected the way we buy anything, not just vacuum cleaners, but as far as the vacuum cleaner market goes, the impact of the internet coupled with the rocketing sales of the early Dyson models has turned it on it's head. Then there has been the dramatic drop in the retail price of almost all electrical goods, and that price difference has to be recouped, be it through the removal of parts and features, or moving production abroad, or whatever else it takes. So it would be impossible to pin-point a specific reason for why vacuum cleaners are being made the way they are today as there are so many factors which need to be accounted for. But the fact remains that whatever we experts think of a cleaner, that same cleaner will have been built the way it was because (A)it is cheap (B) it works and (C) it sells.

 

[rolls_rapide]

I doubt that, on the basis that Hoover Candy acquired all the other design rights that make up the various machines. e.g. the Constellation name.

No, more likely is that Candy is looking to Europe with their love of hard flooring, so the UK has to do without to suit the rest of Europe.

Probably "much cheapness" has a very big hand in it too. Cut costs on all fronts, i.e. "look how much plastic isn't going into our new brushrolls..."

 

[vintagerepairer]

Mr Murray, you make good points about the activator on the Hoover cleaner not being effective on the Purepower, but we must not lose sight of the fact that Hoover had not been overly promoting the beats as it sweeps as it cleans mentality for some time. It was mentioned in their sales brochures and possibly on some cleaners themselves, but you would have to go a long way to find someone who was bothered about the beating action. I think it was a generational thing to be truthful. The need for a beater bar got forgotten as time progressed and indeed for a good deal of time Hoovers competitors had been known to slip in the odd line or two about how their cleaners had no beating action. I am sure it was Hotpoint who were keen to say that their upright vacuum did not beat the carpet and portrayed the action as harmful to the carpet pile.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Rolls_Rapide, love your name by the way, my mother used to own a Rolls Concord, it looks as though you are disagreeing with my post, which I have no problem with of course, but I think you were possibly referring to the one made last by Alex. Could you clarify for me?

 

[rolls_rapide]

Vintagerepairer

No not you, I was disagreeing with Alex. You just posted quicker than me.

My gran had a Rolls "Rapide" twintub washing machine.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Thank you for replying. Mother had a Concord but I don't remember a thing about it apart from it having three dials on the front, each one close to the next. I only know she kept it up to the point where she was bought a Hoover front loading automatic.

 

[jmurray01]

That's very true Benny, since the Senior range ceased production in the late 70s (with the exception of a few store exclusives like the Co-op Ranger etc...) the "Beats as it Sweeps as it Cleans" reputation was lost.

Yes, some say the Activator brush roll was better than the traditional beater bars, but I still disagree.

I'm sure the main reason HOOVER stopped incorporating the beater bars with their brush rolls was due to the fact that the general consumer would see a big lump of metal on the brush roll and think "oh no, that'll ruin my carpet!".

 

[vintagerepairer]

I think the reason the metal beater was lost was because more and more parts on all vacuum cleaners were switching to plastic as it was cheaper, and a one-piece roller like on the Turbopower would mean less assembly too, as there was no need to fit two beater strips to the cleaner. My own opinion as to why Hoover switched from two wide beater strips to several plastic lumps is because if the traditional beater had been all plastic, it would very likely get damaged easily by hard debris. One only has to look at the condition of the beaters on Electrolux 500 and Hitachi cleaners to see this. But I could be very wide of the mark.

I still stand by my comments that the beats as it sweeps as it cleans idea had long passed by the mid 1980s. The U1104 Junior was the last to really talk about such a feature and even those models were fitted with a Turbopower style roller towards the end of their production run.

 

[alexhoovers94]

Maybe it wasn't publicly announced as much as it used to be but threw the 80's and early 90's it was still there, as you can see from a picture of a page on this brochure from about 1990 I think? it is still beeing advertised.

 

[jmurray01]

The carpet in that picture is the same as the stuff we have upstairs!

 

[alexhoovers94]

Yh it is nice carpet.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Hi Alex, thank you for sharing that. It confirms exactly what I was saying, that Hoover still mentioned the beating action in their literature, even though the salespeople in stores and such places would not generally home-in on the beating facility in any great detail when selling a new cleaner. And again as I said earlier, not many purchasers in the last twenty-odd years were geared towards a beating action, I suppose as there were other features on a good deal of other makes and models which they liked more than the cleaner with the beaters maybe. I think it all depends what little details individual people go for. I do recall well one older couple buying a reconditioned Electrolux 502S off me and liking the fact that they could replace the roller brushes piecemeal, unlike their existing and much newer cleaner where the roller was a complete unit. But I didn't get many people asking questions about things like that.

 

[floor-a-matic]

It's a shame Hoover no longer uses beater bars since the Elites were introduced here in the USA. Why can't Hoover (both USA & UK companies) continue making BEATER BARS & METAL brush rolls instead of PLASTIC? Beater bars actually ENHANCE deep cleaning of carpets better than a stiff bristles-only roller ever could.

I wonder if Candy is doing the same things to Hoover UK as TTI with Hoover USA like cheapening their quality & removing key features (full bag indicators, dirt sensors, inefficient tools, etc)?

 

[jmurray01]

I wouldn't call a full bag indicator a key feature... As said in another thread they are next to useless.