I recently acquired a rough Electrolux Silverado vacuum on accident. I won a mint 1521 UltraLux on Ebay, and the seller offered to send me a Silverado with it free of charge. Of course I couldn't say no. The Silverado arrived, but it's much rougher than I expected. The bottom of the tank is pretty badly rusted, and there's some sort of tough glue residue all over the bag door.

Any ideas about how to go about repairing/refurbishing this guy? It's surprising, but the canister actually has excellent suction power. And not only that, but the motor sounds excellent, too! It seems worth saving, but right now in its current state, I'm embarrassed to count it as part of my collection, so it lives in my dungeon-like basement cleaning up debris from the mower and laundry.

Any ideas about what to do about the rust/paint would be appreciated. The chrome top is somewhat tarnished, too.

Fyi... here's a link to my current collection, half of which is "vintage."

If it were mine, I'd strip it down, clean it up and get rid of the rust. Then repaint and reassemble. I'd rather have a good looking example than one that will continue to decline. If you really want to do it right, drill out the rivets and do a completely sympathetic restoration. All the parts are out there should anything need replacing. And it was free, so I wouldn't feel bad using it as an experiment if you don't feel you have the skills to make it a good restoration. My first tear down and rebuilt was a Super J that had stood up on the cord winder in about an inch of water for years and was even rusted through in a few spots. I cleaned her up, replaced the entire metal tube with one I got from a local vac shop that had a completely seized motor and painted it to look like the then current Marquise. In retrospect, it was horrible, but it sure worked well and is still in use, with a new all black paint job, by an ex.

My only fear is that I'd never get it looking right again. I don't suppose there are any paint codes out there for Electrolux products?