Hoover Celebrity QS

I picked this up less for any parts it might contain, and more because it was so damn weird looking. To me, it looks more like a waffle iron than a vacuum cleaner. A little research showed that this was probably made in the early to mid 1980s, which surprised me since this is made out of metal.

Vacuum cleaners usually boast about amperage, but I've never seen one advertise its motor in terms of horsepower. And to top that, it's more than a fraction of 1 horsepower.

The inside is pretty weird too. As far as I can tell, there's no place for a bag or a filter or anything like that. The dirt just swirls around the inside, I guess. I wonder if there was a problem with crap getting into the motor.

The controls were extremely simple: on and off.

I only saved the button assembly, but like I said, this teardown was more for the novelty of it than the parts.

Electrolux Marquis vacuum cleaner

Since I added the tag feature on the blog a couple of weeks ago, I noticed it had been a while since I had posted a vacuum cleaner. As it happens, I have a vacuum cleaner in the backlog, so I might as well write an entry about it now. Besides, it breaks up the recent glut of printers and sewing machines.

I think this is a Marquis, but I'm not 100% sure. There aren't very many good pictures on the Internet of Electroluxes from its era (late 1980s), but the couple I did find that claim to be Marquis look pretty much just like this one. This particular specimen has plenty of scuff marks and scratches, so I'm guessing it had a long and storied career of cleaning up messes before finally giving up the ghost. Also, this is apparently one of the last models that had a metal body, before the switched over to plastic.

The front of the vacuum, with the housing removed. The control system looks fairly similar in principle to the older Silverado Deluxe I took apart last year.

Here you can see the see-saw-like on/off switch mechanism.

Not much to show for my efforts, but I do like the roller/knob parts on Electroluxes. I think they remind me of the wheels off some toy I used to have.

Eureka Boss Pro vacuum cleaner

This is one of the rare upright vacuums that I ocassionally grab. Most of them are either too heavy, or lack an adequate handle to carry by bike back to the apartment. This one was light and had a folding handle, so I took it. Though, had there been something better, I wouldn't have bothered with the Eureka.

This seems like a fairly sturdy vacuum cleaner, though for some reason the all-silver color scheme sort of makes it look cheap. I took one of these apart not long before I began documenting my junk, so I knew what to expect from it, which wasn't really that much, partswise.

Not a lot of complicated mechanisms here. That motor is really small, compared to some I've seen. I would have kept it had I thought I could get it out without messing it up. Not that I have any idea what I'd use it for.

The upright part, with even less parts.

Most of what I saved, I'd classify as 'plastic stock,' or basic flat or curved shapes I can cut down for other purposes. Also, I now have two of those handle pieces, which might be nice if I can think of what to do with them.

Electrolux LE vacuum cleaner

This is another one of those "I'm here already, so I might as well snag it" kind of finds. As I've said before, vacuum cleaners usually don't have many parts, especially the little parts I like to collect, but, as I also have said before, I'd rather take something lame apart than nothing at all.

What I got was pretty much a body. The motor and the hoses had been cannibalized. Just as well, since I can't think of anything I can use a motor like that right now.

This Electrolux is an update of the type I wrote about a few months ago. The older one had a metal body, while this 'upgrade' has a plastic body, albeit a fairly tough one.

I'm not sure where the settings control is on this vacuum. Maybe it was on a part that was salvaged by the sew/vac shop. The innards of this piece are much less complicated than the analog on the older Electrolux.

I can't tell if this is elegantly simple or a cheap cop-out. The two halves of the body are held together (sans adhesive or fasteners, I might add) by those plastic strips. When you slide them out, the body halves fall away. Also note the lack of hubcaps on the wheels.

Not a big parts haul out of this one, but it's a vacuum cleaner, so I didn't expect one.

Electrolux Silverado Deluxe canister vacuum

The majority of what I take apart is either the victim of obsolescence, shoddy construction, or most often it seems, a combination of the two. Buet every once in a while, I run across a relic from the Bygone Era of Solid Construction that finally gave up the ghost after years of service. I always feel a twinge of guilt when I scrap them and only keep a few arbitrary and minor trophies instead of keeping the whole thing and repurposing it. Case in point, this Electrolux. It sat on my floor for close to a week while I tried to think of something that I could make out of it that would use the body, but in the end, I couldn't come up with anything.

A bit of online research revealed this vacuum to have probably been built circa 1972 to 1975. This machine is skirting 35 years old, and it's design is very much of it's time. A lot of the parts are some sort of high-impact plastic, but the main body is steel, as is some of the accenting (note the shiny piece on the top). Visually, it falls somewhere in between the Jet Age swoopiness of the late 1960s and the stoic utilitarianism of early 1980s appliances. It's not as iconic as the old Kirby vacuums, but it's still a rather striking design for something that sucks up dirt and cat hair. And for some reason, the overall shape sort of reminds me of the Landmaster from Damnation Alley.

That's the motor right there. It didn't want to come out, which goes to show that my rule of disassemblability=quality does not always hold true.

The settings control is mechanical rather than electronic.

The top piece comes completely off. The rubber tube coming out of the main body channels the exhaust air into the air vents on that top piece, and it obviously wasn't cleaned out very often. It strikes me as odd for whatever reason that the main body doesn't have much indication beyond the screw holes that the plastic piece fits there. No indentation or recess stamped into the sheet metal or anything.

A vacuum cleaner with hubcaps. Seriously old school.

I wish I had enough reason to justify keeping more than just this small selection of parts. Or at least more storage room in the apartment. But even as the bulk of the old Electrolux goes on to the landfill, a few pieces remain behind as reminders of its 30-plus years of existence. And hell, even if I end up throwing the parts away, it still got soething of an online obituary, which is more than most vacuum cleaners get.

Dirt Devil Can Vac

For the most part, dead vacuum cleaners aren't worth the trouble it takes to bring them back to the apartment. I can't even carry a full-size upright vac on my bike. I only grabbed ths little Dirt Devil, almost as an afterthought, because it was small and ther wasn't anything better being tossed out.

It's a fairly unremarkable vacuum, with the exception of the carrying strap. At least I think a strap is unusual. It may not be for all I know.

The wheels came off easily. There was no axle, but rather a round tab and slot system (or whatever the technical name for that is) that the wheel snapped into. I've seen that done on other small vacuum cleaners, and it always reminds me of how the wheels are attached to a lot of toys.

Those screw holes go deep, almost down to the midline of the vacuum. My screwdriver was barely long enough for several of them, and not quite long enough for the one at the front. I really ought to get a better set of screwdrivers. I had to use another screwdriver to pry that back piece off.

That sticker on the aforementioned back piece indicates that this vacuum cleaner was only ten years old. Maybe it was heavily used and just wore out, but ten years seems kind of young for it to quit working. My parents had the same vacuum for close to twenty years, and still keep it around as a backup for the newer one.

Once I exhausted what I could do with screwdrivers, I only had one other tool to use: the ground. I took the carcass out to the trashpile, then I smashed it on the pavement a couple of times to jostle the on/off switch loose. Not that it was that impressive a button, but the trophy count on this one was so low, anything was better than nothing. Plus it's fun to smash things.

Yep, that's it. Two buttons and the axle from the front piece.