Recently, I took my recent addition Kirby over to my where my other Kirby rests, and I started to notice some differences. They're not major differences, but they still exist, therefore I thought I'd point them out. I cannot date when they did these changes as I don't have enough machines to be able to do that, so maybe it'll be a group project of seeing what they did in different years.

For a general rule, one was made in December of 1981, and one was made in April of 1983.

First Up: Headlights:

Left = 1981

Right = 1983

The earlier models had the 80's Kirby logo carved into the plastic of the headlight whereas later ones didn't. I have noticed that on every Heritage 84 I find the headlight is like my 1983 model.

Next, on the handle fork for the 1981 model, you will notice that there is no Kirby logo whatsoever, including when you compare it to the picture in the next post.

Also, look at the kick plate. It's plastic, but with a piece of plastic/paper with writing on it with a piece of plastic in front of it. I'll get a better picture in another post.

Here on the 83, we have a little Kirby logo and then the kick plate is one piece of plastic with all the writing and texture molded into the plastic.

Kick plate on the 81. (I don't have a picture of my 83's kickplate, nor will I until Saturday.)

The 81 also has a fabric fill tube whereas my 83 has a plastic fill tube. (Yay for my phone losing the pictures I took of my Kirbys, I had all the pictures ready to go but they're not there) Also, the zipper on the 81 is a plastic zipper, but the one on my 83 has a metal zipper. The plastic one is so much nicer though.

Luckily, eBay has saved the day to show us a bag with the metal zipper and plastic fill tube like on my 83!

And while this isn't a great photo of it, you can see the different texture of the kick plate 

That poor, pollen-coated, tarnished, Dusty, bag-bloated Kirby!

I'm sure with the Heritage II unveiling the following year, I'm sure the 84 would be a mix-match of old 

And new parts. I'm sure my 84 has the cloth fill-tube, I believe it has the KIRBY molded into the headlamp.

Losing pictures on a phone, I take all my good, non-internet pictures in film!

I know that my 1983 Heritage has never had a part replaced on it in it's life. All the date codes match up, and there's nothing signifying that the bag or fill tube were replaced.

when it first came out.  The first run did have a cloth fill tube, as opposed to the plastic one.  I think the original idea was that with the Tradition, the plastic tube was a point of failure.  I seem to remember replacing a lot of them under warranty because they were splitting, usually at the base where they connected to the Sani- Em-Tor.  The cloth tube had it's problems too.  As the bag filled, they would get choked off and greatly reduce air flow.  I think that's why they went back to the plastic fill tube after it was re-engineered.