Hoses: Old vs. New
Charlie:
I do the same thing you're doing in regards to hoses- I prefer the new vinyl ones to the originals when it comes to actual use. My 1205 does not have an original woven hose, but my Diamond Jubilee does. I had to replace the hose when it developed a bad leak. The increase in flexibility was huge- I had not realised how stiff that woven hose was until I got the vinyl one. Now, I have vinyl hoses for both machines, and both are genuine Aerus (I HATE those cheapie bojack hoses from eBay; they don't last). While I suppose one could say these machines aren't completely original, I feel that they are in the sense that OEM parts are still available for these machines decades after they were built, even if the parts have been redesigned.
I have kept the Diamond Jubilee's hose for the sake of originality, and if I found a 1205 hose (pretty!), I would almost certainly pick it up, to have an original for that one, too. But I wouldn't use it, even if it were perfect. Too stiff, and it would almost certainly crack in short order, since it would be over 30 years old now.
Someone in this thread wondered why the attachments don't ever seem to make it to the thrift store along with the cleaner. Actually, they do- it's the sorting process in the back room that separates things. Burger-school dropouts do most of the work, and they often don't have any clue what goes with what. It doesn't help that things get dumped onto the collection trucks, dumped again into sorting bins in the sorting room, and generally banged around. Usually, a thrift store will have bags of odds and ends hanging on the wall somewhere; you'll often find vacuum tools in them. When I'm thrifting and find something with a part missing, I always search the entire store to find the missing part- it often gets put on another shelf or aisle. When I found my Diamond Jubilee in the vac section of my local thrift, the PN-5 was in the shoe department, left there by a tired shopper or a hyperactive kid who'd maybe been playing with it. $2.02 for the whole shebang.
