Dating a Pre-1970 Royal Upright (and Pre-1975 Royal Prince)

[kirbyclassiciii]

Hi,

I have a question that is sure to make every Royal vacuum fanatic curious: does anyone know how to date (to decipher how old the vacuum is going by the sequence # alone) a pre-1970 Royal upright/canister/tank / pre-1975 Royal Prince???

The reason I am bringing this up is because it was sometime after 1970 that Royal began making their serial #s on their uprights and canisters/tanks date-able. However, the Royal Prince hand vacuum did not adopt this format for its serial #s until circa 1975 (the '60s Royal Prince 501s also did not use the model-serial # format, an example being 880-15162, like on the pre-1970 uprights/canister/tanks).

For example, model 501 serial #B-87109 dates to March 1976 (full: #67C-B-87109). However, serial #B-66035 for a 501 would date much further back, say, 1972 or '73.

Another example: model 880, serial #H-55989 crosses over to December 1971 (full: #17M-H-55989).

So, could anyone please decipher how old these pre-1970 models are??? This is like trying to find out how old an old Briggs & Stratton engine is (there are pages available to date certain pre-1963 B&S engines).

~Ben

 

[hygiene903]

I Know Of One Sure-Fire Way To Date The Uprights

But you really don't want to do it unless you're doing repair work such as changing a bearing plate or cleaning up the armature as this dating methid involves a teardown.
Remove belt and brushroll, fan housing, light, nozzle, motor brushes, fan, and bearing plate. Then remove the armature and when you do, you'll find the year AND month of manufacture on the armature.
Jeff