Eureka Excalibur Canister 6975

[regularrett69]

Here's a quick update, I've gotten a good amount of new vacuums recently but I'd just like to share my experience with one. It's a Eureka Excalibur canister, the top of the line Quiet Kleen model. I bought it from Kyle Krichbaum, and am very happy with it. It's assembled very oddly, the back part of the vacuum pulls out of the main unit and is only held in with clips and two tiny screws, but I have the thing all cleaned up and working very nicely. It's not in any way put together how a Miele is, that's more like layers of the vacuum stacked, the Eureka splits basically. The Eureka's main bag housing is also somehow fused together so you couldn't really do a deep clean on the bag compartment. This one takes MEGA bags, but I don't have the energy to go get a pack, I wedged a Bissell style 7 bag and it's been working just fine. This one has the world vac power head (with an extremely loud motor, but that's normal. Just weird how loud it is and nobody mentions it) and original lightbulb still functioning. The cleaning tools are great, the synthetic dusting brush is still very soft despite the bristle length, it had done some good dusting for me. I broke the power button trying to figure out how to get it off, but it had one clip left so it's still on there.


 


It's been molded in a dark green color, a very nice one. I needed to polish the vac so unfortunately I did take off the original sticker showing all of its features, it's still resting in my collectibles drawer though. The canister cleans very satisfactory, and had a quiet main suction motor. On the filter grille, it says "filter check" and has two molded holes that just show the filter. I have no idea what this is for, why there are two holes, and the filter isn't even on the side facing up showing how much carbon dust is coming out of the motor. Last thing to mention is the pre motor filter, the thing is huge. I need to recut one because my current has sand caught within the fibers, but it just stunned me on the size of it, and the fact that there's no official seating position or cage to put the filter in, you just kinda set it in front of the motor and when it's powered on it sucks the filter close so no dirt gets into motor.


 


I see no other acknowledgement on this vacuum, other than on newspapers.com, which I'll be showing a snip of below. If you're considering getting one, and its a good price ($50 or below) buy it. It'll resell on eBay (maybe to me) at the least. I've got a lot of collector friends jealous of my find.


 


Thanks, Garrett

 

[eurekaprince]

This was top-rated by Consumer Reports in the early 1990’s (maybe 1993).

Sweden’s Electrolux married two products from two of their subsidiaries to create this 120-volt cleaner for North America: a Swedish Volta Mega canister (see youtube clip below) and an American Eureka World Vac power nozzle. They were trying to combine the best of their European canisters with the best of their American power nozzles...it should perform really well - especially on carpets...enjoy your new toy!

 

[vacuumdevil]

@regularrett69
It's nice to see more pictures of this. There is a time when these things were not uncommon. Very cool to see now. I assure you whatever local vacuum store is by you will sell you all of their" mega "bags for next to nothing.

 

[cam2s]

This is similar to my Europa canister. I believe it was also a European canister married to the world vac PN. The motor filter is also very large, basically the entire back wall of the bag chamber though it takes regular sized bags. Its kinda odd that they marketed the canister as a Quiet Kleen (which it is quiet) but didn’t make any attempt to quiet the PN down. Overall a fairly solid combination and you certainly don’t see them very often.

 

[regularrett69]

Cool!

I was just chatting about the Europa with some other collectors recently. They were also called the Home Cleaning System or something similar, one in blue just went up for sale in craigslist in my area. The Europa I really want though is the one with electronic motor speed control in the handle, and main power switch in handle. I wonder if I could try to get the power nozzle motor quiet, use the same padding technique that sharp would use to make their Twin Energy "library quiet". One more version of that style was also called an Excalibur, though I don't know the difference between them. It's surely cool that these Eureka canisters from the 90's that we have are Sweden made, they really perform like it!

 

[gottahaveahoove]

Very nice

rug ,there.

 

[eurekaprince]

That Eureka Europa canister is also made by Volta - it was called the Gemini in Europe. Here's one of them on YouTube....see below...

I think Electrolux bought up Volta way back in the 1970's - around the same time they bought Eureka Williams.

 

[cam2s]

I wonder if the American versions came with a floor brush and wands originally, it still has the parking clip on the side but the PN wands do not have the clip, though it’s a moot point since it will stand up on its own.

 

[regularrett69]

Volta

Yes I saw the Volta versions of both, one day after I had bought mine and it was being shipped to my house I got recommended a video of one and thought it was amazing, told some other collectors. It was a very weird thing to see that with the slider electronic speed control where on my version its just a panel with a single non functional bag check light.

 

[eurekaprince]

Lots of Eurekas were made by Volta in the 1990’s. That odd GE power nozzle canister sold at Walmart was also made by Volta - very colourful suction only versions were sold in Europe.

The Swedish word for vacuum cleaner is dammsugare. If you search for “dammsugare Volta” on Google and YouTube you’ll see lots of familiar cleaners that were sold as Eurekas in North America. Same for the German company Progress. Search for “staubsauger Progress” and you’ll see some familiar Eurekas. Progress was another of the many vacuum cleaner companies that Electrolux “sucked up” over the decades.

 

[kirbyklekter]

Not so much the p/n

but the canister itself looks a lot like my Kenmore Progressive of that same vintage.The styling cues are quite similar. Why do you think they've become so popular as of late, word of mouth? I think people seek these out more for their performance and utility than to restore and put on display, although that certainly happens too. Even being plastic, they are quite durable and thankfully aren't saddled with a lot of electronics!

 

[fan-of-fans]

I remember seeing that green Excalibur canister in my JCPenney catalog circa 1995. I've never seen any of those Swedish style Eureka canisters around here though. I think they are all very interesting.

The swivel hose/top mount style canisters were popular in the 90s, and actually predate the Kenmore Progressive somewhat. Sears came out with that style in 1984 and by the 90s both Hoover and Eureka were making them with that style. Hoover had the Futura and Spectrum series canisters that later morphed into the Windtunnel canisters in the late 90s-mid 2000s.

Eureka and Hoover were still offering some nice canisters back then. It's a shame how things have changed in the last 15 years in that regard.

 

[eurekaprince]

It was not difficult to have a suction only canister with a full swivel hose - Eureka's Mobile Aire had that way back in the 1960's.

The challenge was to offer that with the new power nozzle canister vacs - somehow you had to figure out how to allow an electrified hose to swivel at the canister. The simplest way of doing that was to have a "pigtail cord" provide the electrical connection between canister and hose. Panasonic - always "slightly ahead of its time" - designed a hose end that had a circular current conductor allowing the hose to swivel 360 degrees without the need for a pigtail electrical wire. All the other power nozzle canisters could only offer a partial swivel (180 degrees or 270 degrees) because of the pigtail connector cord.

The Panasonic and Kenmore cleaners advertised this 360 degree swivel hose right on the canister itself: "360 degree cleaning". A very ingenious design that made their power nozzle canisters very very easy to use!