New to me Royal 886

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What a magnificent find and a fantastic price! I'm happy to be the whipping boy that gave Matt the impetus to find that cream puff...lol.


 


My eBay 880 came today all broken down in a box. Wish I could say it was an incredible find too, but alas I cannot. I wished I had offered him even less, he probably would have taken it.


 


These are the issues so far;


1 Belt looks like toast


2 Needs new brush roll


3 Bag has someone's dirt in it(pet peeve of mine)


4 Outer bag is some generic thing with a spring and a hole that was not pictured in the auction(the hole). 


5 Dented Adjust-O-Rite face. I can get it close to perfect with a small ball peen and the head taped....lot of time there(already torn apart).


 


On the plus side, I see no rust and other than the bag, it appears to be all there. The wheels are decent and will clean up fine with denatured alcohol-not beat up and worn down. She's seen some use for sure, but not excessive. 


 


Rather than put it all back together, I'll post some pics of the parts and then again after she's restored....may be some time though before she's done. She has to share my time with other hobbies needs.


 


Kevin


 
 
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Thanks Ben.....

That brush roll is spendy....even if it's NOS! Plus he wants $20 to ship to me...that's crazy.


 


The Adjust-O-Rite plate if you blow it up with the eBay magnifier...has some dents in it. Although the paint is marginally better than mine, I can get my dents out for the most part. And he lying, it's not "Like New" at all. I'll wait for a better one to surface on the bay unless they are uber rare?


 


Thanks once again for the help and the part numbers! I may convert my outer bag to Type B so I can use HEPA bags......and have an original Type A bag blue, for show. 


 


Kevin
 
Yeah.....

I've got that place bookmarked. I was gonna call them directly when I'm ready to spend some more $$ on the 880. There was another place I found that had the Type A bag but in orange....I'm not doing that.


 


Matt found some HEPA F G bags too....so I will be set if I can score a blue outer bag. 


 


Kevin
 
So.....

I got the seller on eBay to come down on his shipping for the 880 brush roll priced @$37.99 and I bought it. These NOS brush rolls aren't cheap no matter who your source is.


 


This seller doesn't have any other vac parts and was pricing it to sell.  His high shipping cost is an effort to recover the fees eBay is charging him. Generally, I try to stay away from sellers trying to do that...especially the ones that reduce the item cost and hammer you for shipping. I've seen light items sell for $10 and then shipping was $15-$25.


 


Kevin
 
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Very nice blue Royals Matt. Good work getting them sorted out.
Kevin, sorry to hear of your troubles. I recently went into my station wagon I use to store some of my vacuums looking for a Royal. I found that the wheels on my green bagged metal Royal upright were weirdly all crumbly!
That's right, they turned partially white and crumbled away from the axles. That's what a few years of neglect gets you. I have to guess it was some unholy combination of sun, moisture, and freezing temps which do happen on ocassion here over night.
 
The Blue Royal Twins will serve our home for many years to come. Visually the 1987 wheels appear to be Phenolic aka 1930's technology marketed under the trade name Bakelite. Not particularly great UV resistance tremendous heat tolerance which is not needed on a vacuum wheel. The redeeming quality is after a thermoset is compression molded it tends not to chemically adhere to other items. i.e. crumbs, carpet fibers etc. This may be why they stuck with it for so long. That and it was very cheap containing upto 50% tree fiber.
REF period technology
http://www.elvenkrafte.com/bakelite presentation.htm

Fit's the look and feel of the uprights but could have been upgraded to modern thermoplastics as their cost were sufficiently low by the 1980 compared to thermosets. Kevin had a good idea of finding a fitment of skateboard wheels with bearings urethane treads. Even today Phnolic makes a good choice because it is a cheap bulk molding compound with good dimensional stability used on a wide array of load bearing casters. You might find one to fit...

http://www.castercity.com/phenolicw.htm
 
<a name="start_32811.367627"></a>Here's another brush roll, just like the one I showed you before that you finally got, but this one is really priced outrageously!


 


I actually saw that same brush roll listed twice;once at a vac place and once on eBay...same pic and same price so I assumed it was the same vendor.



I figured that was the 'high-end' of those brush roll prices for NOS and the one I bought was the 'low-end' price for NOS.


 


That's a sad commentary on those wheels, Robert....obviously they were made to withstand indoor environs. As I discussed with Matt....I can't fathom why Royal didn't go with polyurethane wheels like skateboards did. Technology has been there since the early 70's.... it's relatively cheap, they would last forever in a home environ etc. Some of today's longboards have wheels very large and similar to the Royals. If you could make shaft size compatible, you could use those awesome ball bearings skaters use and ride your Royal down a paved hill!



 


Kevin
 
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