DesertTortoise
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2014
- Messages
- 1,189
The Desert Tortoise is way out of his lane here. This is what $25 bucks and some morning elbow grease looks like.
This one won't be a restoration, just a good functional clean up. When I figured out how to get the halves apart and how to remove the motor and power cord, I could not determine how to remove the bag compartment from the lower half. With all that wiring in there and no obvious way to get the bag compartment out, I settled for hand cleaning it using wet towels and a long thin flat blade screwdriver to work the wands into the many little webs in that lower casting.
It was filthy inside, but the images don't convey how ripe it smelled. The inside of the rear of the bag compartment and the motor side of the intake were encrusted with something, um, fragrant. Not sure if it was cat crap or vomit (or both?), but whatever it was I am certain it made it's way through the motor. The piece of carpet pile hanging from the fan in one image is all you need to know. When I split it open the stench was overwhelming. It required a lot of scrubbing with Zeps Big Orange, and even still when I poked a rag down into the cast recesses behind the processor board I found more of whatever contaminated that poor vacuum. Now it either smells good or my sniffer simply started to ignore the stench.
Nice materials everywhere, looks to be very robust and durable, but not a very good design. There is no secondary filtration and exhaust air makes it's way everywhere inside the vac. I thought my Kenmore canisters had poor exhaust air segregation but this vac is worse. And with no secondary filtration you are entrusted entirely to a filter bag. This vac is proof it doesn't work. In my images you will see my partial solution to this problem.
Stay tuned because the wands and powered brush are even worse looking. They are next up but I have to buy a brush roll and belt before I tackle them. The wands and control handle don't impress me, not for the kind of money these things fetched when new. Both are cool looking but needlessly fragile. The one place were thick, heavy duty plastics are an absolute necessity (face it, handles get dropped on floors, it happens) and they used thin fragile materials. And what exactly is wrong with simple steel button lock wands with a power cord running up the back? The lower wand is stuck in the brush swivel, probably have to loosen it with some WD-40. Looking at the underside of the brush you can see it doesn't do edges well. The brush roll doesn't extend all the way to either side of the head like a Powermate brush roll does.
It's a $25 learning experience. I'll replace the hose with an OEM replacement, replace the brush rolls and belts in the floor brush and Sidekick 2 and see how it works. I think eventually I will adapt a four wire Kenmore hose to the Electrolux hose end at the vacuum, use a Kenmore handle for a multi-speed motor (I am pretty sure the Progressive line offered a vac with three speeds on the handle like this Electrolux) and run Kenmore wands and Powermate. The Electrolux stuff is too fragile in my opinion for a hard working daily vacuum.
Enjoy the images. These are the before images before I got busy cleaning. The after images and the secondary filtration tutorial are to follow. The Kenmore restoration staff was not impressed by this interloper, as you can see. I have some blood equity in this project now.
This one won't be a restoration, just a good functional clean up. When I figured out how to get the halves apart and how to remove the motor and power cord, I could not determine how to remove the bag compartment from the lower half. With all that wiring in there and no obvious way to get the bag compartment out, I settled for hand cleaning it using wet towels and a long thin flat blade screwdriver to work the wands into the many little webs in that lower casting.
It was filthy inside, but the images don't convey how ripe it smelled. The inside of the rear of the bag compartment and the motor side of the intake were encrusted with something, um, fragrant. Not sure if it was cat crap or vomit (or both?), but whatever it was I am certain it made it's way through the motor. The piece of carpet pile hanging from the fan in one image is all you need to know. When I split it open the stench was overwhelming. It required a lot of scrubbing with Zeps Big Orange, and even still when I poked a rag down into the cast recesses behind the processor board I found more of whatever contaminated that poor vacuum. Now it either smells good or my sniffer simply started to ignore the stench.
Nice materials everywhere, looks to be very robust and durable, but not a very good design. There is no secondary filtration and exhaust air makes it's way everywhere inside the vac. I thought my Kenmore canisters had poor exhaust air segregation but this vac is worse. And with no secondary filtration you are entrusted entirely to a filter bag. This vac is proof it doesn't work. In my images you will see my partial solution to this problem.
Stay tuned because the wands and powered brush are even worse looking. They are next up but I have to buy a brush roll and belt before I tackle them. The wands and control handle don't impress me, not for the kind of money these things fetched when new. Both are cool looking but needlessly fragile. The one place were thick, heavy duty plastics are an absolute necessity (face it, handles get dropped on floors, it happens) and they used thin fragile materials. And what exactly is wrong with simple steel button lock wands with a power cord running up the back? The lower wand is stuck in the brush swivel, probably have to loosen it with some WD-40. Looking at the underside of the brush you can see it doesn't do edges well. The brush roll doesn't extend all the way to either side of the head like a Powermate brush roll does.
It's a $25 learning experience. I'll replace the hose with an OEM replacement, replace the brush rolls and belts in the floor brush and Sidekick 2 and see how it works. I think eventually I will adapt a four wire Kenmore hose to the Electrolux hose end at the vacuum, use a Kenmore handle for a multi-speed motor (I am pretty sure the Progressive line offered a vac with three speeds on the handle like this Electrolux) and run Kenmore wands and Powermate. The Electrolux stuff is too fragile in my opinion for a hard working daily vacuum.
Enjoy the images. These are the before images before I got busy cleaning. The after images and the secondary filtration tutorial are to follow. The Kenmore restoration staff was not impressed by this interloper, as you can see. I have some blood equity in this project now.
