Homeless vacs often find their way to my place as well. One of my sons-in-law called me and said, "When are you going to pick up that vacuum cleaner I've had for you in my garage for the past year?" He'd found it abandoned in an apartment he was working on. I said, "As soon as I find out about it!" Well, I went over there and it was a Eureka Altima upright (not Nissan), not too old. Missing all the attachments, and the two front (elevation) wheels and the strut are gone. It's not an expensive machine, but other than the missing stuff it's in pretty nice condition; it oughtta be considering it's age. It seems to work well. I might buy the wheels, strut, axle and spring (cost less than $9.00) and wait and see if I can get the attachments at the Goodwill. The hose is there, but the little turbo hand nozzle is a $24 part, plus it needs the wand/crevice tool, and brush nozzle.
My daughter, the one married to this son-in-law recently asked me if I had a vac that I could spare. I was told that theirs wasn't working well anymore. Then my son-in-law said, "Yeah, it doesn't have much suction now; it's just worn out." So I brought that one home with the Eureka. It's a Hoover Breathe Easy upright, USA-made in 1999, takes a Z bag. After having it around for a few days, decided to put it up on the bench and have a look-see, check for hair balls in the hose, etc. Well, I took the nozzle area apart and aside from dirt and carpet strings wound around the brush roll, couldn't find much wrong with it. Then I noticed that this model has a cut-off switch for going between floor vacuuming and attachment (hose) vacuuming. If want to use the hose, you must flip this switch to get full vacuum to it. Well, I figure my dumb-bell son-in-law tried to use the hose (hard as that itself is to imagine), didn't flip the switch for hose operation, and figured it didn't have much suction because "it was worn out." So now I have this perfectly good Hoover Breathe Easy sitting there.
Oh, the vac I gave to my daughter to replace the Breathe Easy was another Hoover, a newer "Wide Path" upright that doesn't take a bag. Even though I told them all about what had to be done, what do you want to bet they won't clean the filters, etc? So when they give it back to me because it won't vacuum anymore, I'll just trade them back the Breathe Easy, then cycle back and forth for who knows how long. 'Til I die, maybe, then they're on their own.
