Hoover Cloth Bag Cleaner

[ronreeland]

Hi: Please take a look at this Hoover bag cleaner on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/HOOVER-UBER...LER-ANTIQUE-/151782638073?hash=item2356f341f9

Can anyone explain why the tube containing the brushroll is such an extended length?

And just what is the right angle elbow tube at the motor end?

Finally, it appears the motor itself should be positioned so that a dirt catching bag would be attached to the exhaust flange with the thumb screws.

The photo below is my Hoover bag cleaner which my Father and I used repairing vacuums back in the 1950's and 60's. Notice the shorter brushroll tube and lack of the strange elbow that are shown on the ebay auction.

Thanks,
Ron Reeland

 

[electrolux137]

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That eBay specimen =is= a mystery. I also have a bag cleaner (used to have two of them) and they're both like yours.

The second one in the photos below had a bag that I believe was made by Hoover especially for the Bag Cleaner.

It was silvery-gray with darker-gray pinstripes, and the name "HOOVER" ran vertically down the front of the bag -- but it was upside-down, so that it read right-side up when mounted upside-down on the Bag Cleaner. (Does that make sense?!)

I've never seen another silver Hoover bag like it, and why else would the Hoover name have been printed on it upside-down?

That bag went missing somewhere along the way. I thought maybe I had tucked it away when I sent it to another collector to rebuild it (it was a real mess when I found it), but it never turned up.

The last image I posted was from a 1940s issue of Popular Mechanics. The bag cleaner shown there is yet another variation and one I've never seen in real life.

 

[3rdgenvacguy]

bag cleaner

I have one of the short tube models that is pictured. I used it this afternoon to clean a cloth bag on a commercial Koblenz cloth bag. My great uncle use to make the tube portion of bag cleaners, under the Finkes manufacturing company. I still have some, I will post a picture on Monday. The model on Ebay is strange for three reasons, one the bag tube is very long, not sure what brush they would have used. The original used the tufted type 1 brushroll, (102,103,105,541). Second, the right angle tube coming off usually had a flat plate that was cast into the housing. it has bosses for three bolt holes, but they are not tapped and there is no hole there. Third, the casting to mount the motor is a separate casting. Maybe it is just turned to the side. The original points down, and the bag hangs below the machine.

 

[hismastersvoice]

From what he told me when I talked to him on the phone last year, his dad had this bag cleaner connected to a tank, I believe the Hoover motor just drives the brush, and external suction was applied to the pipe on the side. Of course this is just speculation.

 

[ronreeland]

Thanks for the comments. I took a closer look at my own Hoover bag cleaner and it does indeed have a cast in flat plate that could be bored, drilled and tapped to attach an elbow as shown on the eBay offering. I had never noticed that feature before.

I speculate that the unit on eBay was used in a large service department with a central suction vacuum that was attached to the elbow with a flexible hose. The fact that the bag cleaner casting provided for the elbow or similar opens the possibility that Hoover may have used them in a factory service department.

The long tube does use the same brush-roll as on a standard bag cleaner so the actual intake opening is the same as my bag cleaner. Tough to guess why the tube is so long. A standard Hoover cloth bag would not extend the entire length of the metal tube.

Perhaps, something other than vacuum cleaner bags were cleaned on it that required the extended length.

Ron Reeland

 

[lilkidtech]

Bag cleaner

Hey y'all! I have a Hoover bag cleaner I've had for years and use constantly on both vintage and modern cloth bags (it's the usual type) a while back I noticed the original 105 style. brush roller wasn't really doing it's best, so I managed to cut a Hoover wind tunnel brush to size and fit it on the long drive shaft in place of the original brush. It made a world of difference! Also about this time last year, I noticed after cleaning only a few bags, it's efficiency would drop due to the pores in it's cloth bag becoming blocked with the fine dust being removed from the dirty bags. So I did some thinking... I removed the original cloth bag, took the bag mount ring to the hardware store and got a rubber pipe reducer to fit both the bag ring, and a larger diameter shopvac hose. Using hose clamps to connect it all, I ran the shopvac hose to a large industrial dust collector. The results were amazing! After cleaning 30 or so bags, (without emptying) not only did the dust collector dramatically increase the bag cleaners suction, but it maintained it's airflow due to the larger surface area of filtration of the dust collector. I'll do my best to add photos...
As for the eBay bag cleaner... as far as the unusual length of the brush tube, especially if it was in fact a part of Hoover service on a factory level, there were at one time those massive commercial machines that looked like a 700 on steroids which had much larger bags! Also I have noticed that in using my normal size bag cleaner on normal size Hoover and other bags, when bag cleaning, once I get to the end of the bag opposite the end I started at, the excess of the bag ends up bunching up around the motor end, making it slightly more difficult to keep rotating the bag around the brush tube. So, if this was a machine being used constantly on some factory level, the longer tube would make bag cleaning of any bag much easier a task. As for the bag exhaust pointing to the side rather than down... I got curious last night and removed my bag cleaner motor, I found that the pattern of screws that hold the fan housing to the bag cleaner housing does not allow the fan housing to be rotated in the direction that the eBay cleaner is in. New screw holes would have to be drilled. But why? A bag hanging from that would become restricted! Here's y thought... if not mounted on a pedestal, normally they can only be mounted on the side of a bench for the bag to hang off the side. However, if this machine was to sit in the middle of a bench, turning the fan housing in the manner it's in would allow the cleaner to sit flush on a surface, and the collection bag would lay flat being supported by the bench behind it.?
And then there's that side tube!... it makes no sense to me, I get the concept (mine works as a "tandem air" bypass and flow thru design, and works great, the one suction motor helps the other) but that tube leading to a dust collector, being placed Before the exhaust of the Hoover motor seems like it would work against itself. (By the way, the eBay machine must have a fan on it, because the seller said upon trying it, it blew a dust cloud out of it) tho I'm sure it must have worked somehow, it was in fact built that way. What I'm curious about is, did anyone notice on the front side of that dust collector elbow, there is some kind of pipe fitting covered in duct tape??? Looks like a canister or other vacuum hose must have hooked into it, possibly to clean the inner corners of the cloth bags, or to vacuum the areas surrounding the bag cleaner to keep clean..? I've also never seen that brush adjustment plate on top, or the screw sticking out the side of it. The normal ones do have a brush adjustment for brush wear, but by removing screws in the tube and moving the bearing holders.
Anyway, there's my 2 cents on the matter! For anyone reading, I would also be very interested in anyone who might have or know of any spare bag cleaner parts at all!... mainly round caps that ciiover the end of the brush tube, also bearing holders, bearings, brush rollers (same as a 541, 102, etc), brush shaft pulleys, etc, anything would be a huge help. Happy to hear from anyone out there in vacuumland!
Thanks and happy vacuuming (and bag cleaning).

 

[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

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[lilkidtech]

I apologize for posting all the pictures of my bag cleaner separately (I could not get the option to list them all together to work) but there is how I have mine set up! And tho it's not kept all original, it can easily be put back to original. It works like a beast!

 

[charleskirby66]

Awesome shop!!!

I am so envious!  All I have is a Handi-Butler, hand tools, and some polishing cloths and compounds.  Your setup is amazing!