Goodbye rainbow hello riccar

[gmarquez]

Well after a very long delay my rainbow finally sold and in its place is an older riccar brilliance. It took me a long time to decide if I wanted to buy this older brilliance or a new Maytag. I chose the brilliance for several reasons first of all it ended up being way cheaper then the Maytag and second of all I greatly prefer the styling of brilliance, especially in this beautiful metallic blue. It needs some work of course and it definitely shows signs of living a hard life. When I had it torn down I noticed someone has completely removed the spring assist. It’s also in desperate need of new brush strips which leads to ask which ones to replace them with I know there are several replacements available in different stiffness so which ones would be second stiffest compared to the original gold strips.

 

[blackheart]

2nd stiffest?

Vinyl would be next I believe, I think they were available in Nylon, vinyl or horsehair.

 

[luxflairguy]

Tell me what's so special about your Riccar Brilliance over the Rainbow. I have a Radiance and am not that impressed! I'd rather have the Rainbow over the Riccar! Greg

 

[gmarquez]

So the main reason I decided to replace the rainbow with the riccar is it was just such a hassle to set up every day and dump the water after each room. It was a fine vacuum that preformed well but it was just such a hassle and I wanted to get an upright that would be a little easier to get out and run everyday than my Kirby’s. Ultimately the rainbow just wasn’t a good fit for me. So far I’m really liking the brilliance it’s easy to use and makes the carpet look excellent.

 

[panasonicvac]

Congrats on your purchase! Not as powerful as the M1200 but it's still better than most vacuums on the market today.

 

[rivstg1]

Color

That color is gorgeous I can see why you wanted It

 

[luxflairguy]

Thanks for the answer! Fair enough! Greg

 

[fairfaxclass]

Wait...why were you dumping water after every room?

 

[gmarquez]

I dumped the water after each room because by the time I’d finish one room it would be way to dirty to do the next and I didn’t want to risk damaging the motor by passing to much dust through it.
Also I’m not sure if this is possible but does anyone know if it would be possible to retrofit the high adjustment system from the newer tandem air vacuums to this one as it seems to have a very limited range of adjustment and I’ve heard the newer ones have a much bigger range.

 

[vexorgtr]

Every Room?

What source of dirt would yield that much water change-out? Even when I was a Rainbow user, sometimes I'd change it twice for the house. Is it a commercial environment, or just being super cautious?

I would still be a rainbow user, but I got a Central vac equipped home.

 

[gmarquez]

There are several factors that lead to the water needing to be changed that often, first of all we had a large lab shepherd mix at the time who loved to roll around on the carpet which coated it in her fur, second of all our city is very dry which leads to an abundance of fine dust that coats pretty much everything, and finally there are four people that live here so there’s a fair amount of traffic on them, even without wearing shoes some dirt would still get tracked in. I probably could have gotten by dumping the water after every other room but it just seemed worth it to play it safe.

 

[blackheart]

Height adjustment retrofit

I think we once did that to an older SCR series I remember being sent the wrong components once or twice.
This should be what you need. You may want to check the number of height adjustments on your current one just to confirm, but this came from an S30p schematic so it should be right.

https://www.partswarehouse.com/Riccar-Simplicity-Mv-Variable-Height-Adjust-Assy-p/d474-1200.htm