I thought it was about time I posted some pics of new additions to the collection .....
First off, a rare cleaner in the UK - the AEG Vampyr. I think this featured in an earlier thread when it appeared on ebay, but here it is again. Although it looked a little scruffy it is actually in quite good condition, in the pictures it has only had a quick wash up, no Autosol treatment so far ...
The silver lever at the front releases the top into the bag chamber .... When I got the cleaner this area plus teh bag were completely SATURATED, so much so that the corner of the box was wet too. The AEG disposable bag inside the cloth bag just had to be hurled - it was chock full in any case. Fortunatly this seems to have been relativly short term wetting as the cloth bag was fine once washed and allowed to dry.
The bag takes up most of the space in the base, with a small motor near the front to power the brushroll, belt driven. The main motor and fan are in the "upright" part - the air being extracted from the bag chamber through the two square holes at the back - I did say it was a quick clean up
There is a fairly small opening from the brushroll into the bag, I think those could easily get blocked. By the way, I "cobbled" a disposable bag from a Hoover bag, the aeg one had a cardboard cover with went over a piece of grey pipe on the other side of the cover - rather like a smaller version of teh bag used on Lux 330/345 etc. The cloth bag clips into place on the grey plastic piece.
There are two settings - Normal and Intensive. It did not seem to make much difference to me in terms of noise level, I did not have a chance to see if Intensive made the brushroll rotate faster. Its not a particularly quiet machine either, unless it was actually running full time on intensive rather than normal
I have not been able to age this machine, but teh lack of side suction vents tells me early 1970s if not late 1960s. The cover plate just clips into place
The brushroll is rather like that used on the Lux 152/160/170 with a full width brush on one side (see previous pic) and a beater bar on the other ....
A little flap drops down on the side to reveal the height selector, three positins are demonstrated, but it seems to be pretty much variable between the highest and lowest positions
In the earlier thread someone commented about th eoverall size of the machine, and here it is ceside a Concept 1 for "footprint" comparision. Actually it would also be interesting to compare it to the Hoover Turbo master which I thought was quite large as well
As you can see. Overall it is a very good cleaner, I always like to hear the sound of a brushroll beating and sweeping, with strong suction. It is very large though so not for the smaller home and of course is hopeless under low furniture. I have to contact the vendor about the hose etc. which was missing (it has a pan connector) - the brushroll does not rotate when the handle is in the upright position
After their pioneering work on the DAM it amazes me that they went back to a concept (pardon the pun) that they abandoned in the 1920s - namely the pan converter
In need of a great deal more TLC unfortunatly. My other 419 has a ribbed flex, so this one may be a replacement, and for the amount of insulating tape on it the previous owners must have been quite hard on it. The hose is a replacement, although the connector (rather like Lux 30/55/62/65/90) is correct - 419s had a much longer hose, similar in length to a Senior (Convertable) this is more like a Junior hose. Still its nice to have one in this colour (the flash makes it look rather lighter than it really is. Now I just nead a red one and pale green to complete the set The motor probably needs some work for the amount of "grumbling" that goes on once it is switched off although its fine when switched on. I must check the serial number, but this machine is about 40 years old.
A different twist on the AEG - i.e a powered brushroll with a seperate "sucking unit" - a Vorwerk. This also works well, with a great pivot action on the floor nozzle. It also works quite well on hard floors - although I have no other tools for it. This one was quite cheap £10 and easily collectable for me, so it made sense to add it to the collecton. Well I thought it made sense LOLOLOLOL
The bag does not have a zip! That long green plastic "rod" is in fact a slider to hold the edges of the bag together. There is a wire support to hold teh bag shape and a small fabric tab to hold it in place. The was also a small rubber valve arrangement over the bag entry to stop teh dust falling back out through teh nmachine when it was switched off. The yellow lever on the head appears to be the height selector
The motor probably needs some work for the amount of "grumbling" that goes on once it is switched off although its fine when switched on. I must check the serial number, but this machine is about 40 years old.
