Hoover junior U1012

[vintagerepairer]

When you say the cord was wrapped too tightly, I would beg to differ, only because the cord on so many Hoover cleaners which had this plastic top hook would snap in the same place as your has. Why? Well, if you look carefully at the first piece of flex which passes over the hook, you will see that it slides into a small gap on either side of the hook and this causes the flex to stretch if the flex is pulled, even slightly so, which naturally it is when winding the flex down. The bottom hook is unlikely to create such damage because the user is not going to put quite the same amount of pressure on it as the flex is passed through it and upwards. The remaining turns of flex sit on top of the ones before it, and this makes for an uneven and softer surface. As a result, the flex does not usually snap.

As always, if one factors in room temperature into the equation, this can speed up the time it takes for the flexes to snap. As a good deal of people keep their cleaners in cool or even cold spaces, it is a very real problem. I've seen it myself in the shop, when it was very cold on a winters morning and I unwound the flex of a cleaner and found it to be more like cable than flex, given the stiffness of it. Unwinding and pulling around a cold flex on a regular basis is going to cause issues.

As for the colour of this U1012, I actually don't like or dislike it. I must admit to preferring the cream, brown, & orange scheme of the U1016 Dirtsearcher. I also liked the beige & dark brown colour of the very last U1012.

 

[vintagerepairer]

twocvbloke, I for one do very much take your point about the amount of fluff which got into the Junior motor via the cooling fan, and I also take your point about it being a possible fire hazard. However, in reality I have never in all my years seen any fluff inside one which looked even remotely scorched. So, whilst you and I can think about the potential dangers, the reality has proven to be very different. Certainly if the problem had been widespread it would have come to light many years ago, bearing in mind this style of motor was used from 1959 right up to the later part of the 1980's.

This is in direct contrast to a number of Hoover cleaners where the suppressor blew up, which usually didn't cause any damage, but I know of the odd one or two cases where it burnt a carpet beneath the cleaner.

 

[twocvbloke]

Yeah, the U1104 had it's suppressor blow when I had it, it was down to the brand used (Rifa), which are notorious for detonating and gassing off and all that no matter what the application they're used in, the smell was terrible, I thought I'd picked up a rotten egg when the thing blew... :S

Luckily it wasn't a full-on detonation, but, it certainly did blow with some force, as you can see here:

 

[vintagerepairer]

Well I was thinking more of the older metal barrel type suppressors, but yes, I've seen that happen too, sometimes on Electrolux cleaners.

 

[twocvbloke]

I don't often see many older barrel types, there was one in the Senior I had, but someone seemed to think it was superfluous to the design and cut the wires to it, but didn't remove it, which was odd...

 

[vintagerepairer]

It was something which all Hoover cleaners had from the 1960's or so, into the late 1970s. Cylinder and uprights. Earliest Hoover suppressors were plastic and had the wires moulded into them. Then the larger metal barrel types took over.

 

[twocvbloke]

The only plastic-bodied wires-moulded-in suppressors I've seen the most are the ones in 240v Kirbys, though never ad any problems with those, other than remembering where they were connected...

 

[alexhoovers94]

Yepp twocvbloke, had the motor apart completely and cleaned it, checked the carbon brushes and bearings which are fine. I did have to swap the carbon brushes around, because they must of got taken out and put back in (prior to me owning it) the wrong way which was making a ticking sound against the commutator, so now the brushes are seated against the commutator in the correct way they had worn down previously. But yeah the motor is all dust and fluff free.

 

[jmurray01]

Looks great! I totally agree with the flexes being stupidly short!

Whenever I use my Ranger U4014 I'm always tugging on the cord to get the cleaner to the far side of the rooms.

There will come a day when I have to replace the flex no doubt and when that day comes, the new flex will be a lot longer than the old one!

The strange thing is that the hooks could actually hold a few more metres of wire on the Senior range, so why didn't HOOVER make use of that ?

It wasn't like they were made in a time of extreme material shortages and the price when new (£81 for the U4014) certainly didn't warrant cut backs in manufacture.

 

[twocvbloke]

Less copper cable = More profits...

I got an apparently genuine Hoover replacement cable for my rebuilt Junior, and even that was longer than what had been fitted, presumably aftermarket, but someone had obviously driven over it with the vac and stripped a lot of the insulation off revealing bare copper on both side, and they just taped over it, hence the need to replace it as it was just too dangerous, and they went over the middle of the cable so it was not possible to trim it to get rid of the bad bits, so I managed to accidentally find a genuine Hoover replacement (don't actually know if it was meant for a Junior specifically though) on ebay, bought it and threw it on there...

I do think that's the reason why many older Hoover models of that era have replacement cables, because they were too short even for us brits and our shoebox houses, either replaced by a vac shop guy or by mr. DIY and his insulation tape to make them a little easier to work with, without having to swap sockets every stroke...

 

[eurekastar]

Wow! You did an excellent job! I've never seen a fill tube like that. Thanks for all the great photos too.

 

[alexhoovers94]

Not everyone in the UK has a small house!


I consider my house to be smallish but not that small that all I need is a 6m cable, I don't have a central plug socket in my house that I could get most of my living room vacuumed with just haveing it plugged in once so I am always moving sockets and is really annoying, maybe the junior were designed for small flats and appartments which is why they have shorter cables, with that said thouh jamie said his senior ranger has a 6m cable so may your right twocvbloke about it being cheaper with less copper wire. but It can't of been that much more just adding an extra 4m but ahh well never mind.

Thanks eurekastar, It took me a couple of days to get it like this but it was well worth the effort. That fill tube was brought out on the later 1346 style juniors like this 1012 and on to the very last 80's juniors it was designed to make changing the bag less messy which it did but by no means easier, lol. I like to do nice close ups of my vacuums because I like to see other peoples close up pictures of there vacs too so I do the same

 

[turbomaster1984]

Remember that

back in these days although women worked away from the home a good deal didnt and thus did housework somewhat more differently than it is done today.

6 metres of cable was plenty. If it wasnt an smallish extension cable was often the answer.

Homes were cleaned weekly and a thorough top to bottom of each room done in succession of rooms spread throughout the week.

We tend these days to clean the house on one day of the week and in a mad dash like fashion to get the job done in 2 or 3 hours. This of course means longer cables to facilitate hoovering of 3 or 4 rooms at a time or a whole floor of a house even.

Back then rooms had 1 socket mostly if you were lucky and if it was being cleaned further activity requiring a socket was probably out the window while wifey did what she did.
APpliances didnt fight for sockets like they do now and I seem to see folk cleaning around eachother instead of everyone being shoo'ed out of the way like I was as a kid.

The only sockets not usually in use by a gadget these days are usually hallway sockets or landing sockets thus the vac has to reach all rooms in one succession.

Tuesday in 1972 the lounge may have been cleaned. 6metres was enough to do that task.

Wednesday might of seen the Dining room be done and a bedroom.

Thursday might of seen the other 2 bedrooms done. etc etc.

Im guilty myself of modern cleaning. Thursday night I go from room to room doing tidying then wet cleaning then dusting then finally Hoovering the entire house in one go.
Changing the plug slows you down and gets annoying using a junior or senior but then these were made in the day when this style of cleaning didnt happen.

 

[alexhoovers94]

I guss I didn't think that people cleaned there house quite differently then to what they do today, If I was to clean my house they way the did in the 60's and 70's i think 6m would of been enough if I unplugged one of the gameing consoles in the living room I guss I would of had enough reach to clean the living room, but like you said they wouldn't of had som many gadgets back then so wouldn't of matterd, because all the other plug sockets are taken up in my living room I have to go and use one in the hall which means with a 6m cable I can only reack about half way through the living room.

 

[jmurray01]

I wasn't aware of how homes were vacuumed years ago - Thanks for explaining.

I personally vacuum the whole house thoroughly every single morning, which may seem overzealous, but I like my carpets kept as clean as they can be.

Once a week I give the house a REALLY thorough vacuum, which involves moving the beds etcetera and using the dusting brush for the furniture.

 

[alexhoovers94]

oh I forgot a picture.


This junior came with a re usable bag when I got it which I presume was original to it new but it was really manky so I just threw it out, I didn't know hoover did a H1 style re usable bag, did they? and is this genuine?

 

[jmurray01]

As for the fill tube, that is the same as my Ranger's, which doesn't look strange at all (to me) and I find it easy to change the bag...

I'm not sure about that bag, I don't recall HOOVER making one but they maybe did.

 

[alexhoovers94]

Really?


I always thought the type H1 bags were fidily to change because you have to make sure they are wrapped tight around the fill tube and you stretch the band back over. It was always really messy with the bottom fil style because even if you pulled the bag off with a tight grip grit and dust always fell out onto the floor.

 

[vintagerepairer]

Well I was going to add to this, but our Turbomaster has encapsulated it so very well. I don't think there would have been a cleaner on the market which had a mains leader in excess of what we are now calling 6 meters, give or take. The reasons stated account for why it was not necessary for vacuum cleaners to have anything greater than this length and like I say, there was little alternative on sale. If you think about it, it was only in the early 1990s that vacuum cleaners began to have anything like the length of flex of recent years, and the likes of Panasonic and Hitachi never ever did increase the length to match the likes of the Hoover Turbopower 3 or the Electrolux Contour 2 series.

One thing I do disagree with is the term 'guilt' being used to describe an adoption of modern habits towards cleaning. Firstly, I'd save my guilt in case you commit murder or accidentally turn over a bank. Secondly, you sound like you are doing more than most people anyway. You're certainly doing a good deal more than I do! I say this in good humour of course.

 

[jmurray01]

What about the Electrolux 500 Series Benny ? They had long flexes for their day.