Thread Number: 40940
/ Tag: 50s/60s/70s Vacuum Cleaners
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Post# 434797   11/10/2020 at 22:01 (1,233 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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Do you guys have an OCD about finding attachments for your vacuums? I really prefer to have the attachments for all of my vacuums, in the correct color and in the correct storage spots if it has them.
For a lot of newer machines that are less than 30 years old, and some older ones depending on the brand, finding attachments is not that hard. Often the same attachments are still in production so are easy to order. Especially since most these days only come in gray, black or similar colors. With older ones, especially when the attachments came in different colors in different years, it gets harder to find attachments in the correct color. For example, I have a Hoover Slimline that was missing the crevice tool and furniture tool. I finally got some recently off eBay. Still not the correct color, but close enough and it's nice to have the two holding spots finally filled instead of looking at empty holes every time I open it. Then I just got a mint green Hoover Celebrity. It came with no tools. I know I'll never find a complete set of mint green tools most likely without buying one with the attachments still with it. I did see a mint floor brush last month on eBay. I'm about to either try to find a full set of period white tools from an upright tool set and live with them being white (haven't even had any luck with that yet). Or, I'll just get a modern light gray set of Portapower attachments. (At least they'll fit and light gray won't clash too bad with the mint I don't think). Anyway it still bothers me to have machines with incomplete or missing tool sets. It also drives me nuts when vacuums come in thrift stores with all the attachments yet they inevitably get picked off and go missing as time goes by. If someone tried to buy one attachment from me, I'd tell them to go back and get the whole machine. Also, has anyone had luck finding attachments in thrift stores? None of the ones here have any bins of attachments for sale. Bags yes, but strangely I never see attachments, and can't recall seeing any in the past either. |
Post# 434798 , Reply# 1   11/10/2020 at 22:11 (1,233 days old) by electrolux137 (Los Angeles)   |   | |
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Post# 434802 , Reply# 3   11/10/2020 at 22:35 (1,233 days old) by gottahaveahoove (Pittston, Pennsylvania, 18640)   |   | |
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Post# 434823 , Reply# 4   11/11/2020 at 13:31 (1,233 days old) by eurekaprince (Montreal, Canada)   |   | |
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Indeed, I feel a twinge of discomfort when I see the wrong attachments stored or used with "foreign" cleaners!!!
My mini obsession gets a little crazy when I see Eureka attachments stored incorrectly on vintage Eurekas and Tool Pak attachment caddies!!! All Eureka dusting brushes must be facing forward on the canisters, and if not, I develop insomnia!!! 😁 |
Post# 434836 , Reply# 6   11/11/2020 at 17:20 (1,233 days old) by suckolux (Yuba City, CA)   |   | |
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Post# 434837 , Reply# 7   11/11/2020 at 17:49 (1,233 days old) by detroitdirtbag (Bottom of the Bag)   |   | |
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Post# 434838 , Reply# 8   11/11/2020 at 18:57 (1,232 days old) by RainbowD4C (Saint Joseph, Michigan )   |   | |
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Post# 434847 , Reply# 9   11/11/2020 at 21:45 (1,232 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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Yeah, it's nice when a vacuum comes with all of its attachments, but many times they're missing a few.
It's also a little odd to me how many vacuums on eBay sometimes have attachments for other models with them. Like I see Hoovers with the original attachments but there will be extra dusting brushes or upholstery tools from another model with them or different color, etc. Makes you wonder how people ended up with the extra attachments. Did they have more than one Hoover? Did they buy extras at a vacuum shop? Etc. |
Post# 434859 , Reply# 11   11/12/2020 at 10:40 (1,232 days old) by gottahaveahoove (Pittston, Pennsylvania, 18640)   |   | |
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Post# 434862 , Reply# 12   11/12/2020 at 10:51 (1,232 days old) by vacuumkid47 (Sibley, IA)   |   | |
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Post# 434875 , Reply# 13   11/12/2020 at 13:38 (1,232 days old) by human (Pines of Carolina)   |   | |
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What gets me is how little care thrift store staff take to keep a vacuum together. I've seen a vacuum with all or most of its attachments fall apart over a week or two if it's not bought right away. Attachments and other removable components eventually get scattered all over the store as employees, and maybe even some well meaning customers, pick pieces up off the floor and just put them randomly on a shelf. One brand of vacuum that seems to get preferential treatment in this respect is Kirby. The Goodwill near my house will use what seems like a couple of miles of cling wrap to mummify a Kirby with an accessory kit together. Of course, I've also seen other thrift shops that just sell the accessory kit separately. Again, individual tools just seem to get up and walk away over time if the kit isn't sold right away. The time to buy something like that is truly when you first see it.
While I do try to use the "right" brand of accessories with my vacuums, I'm less concerned with model colors. A while back, I bought a Kirby Heritage Convenience Group kit that was missing a few tools, most of which I was able to fill in with some random navy blue Tradition tools. I completed cobbling this set together by purchasing a Classic Omega tool kit because it was cheaper than trying to source the extra long wand by itself but I haven't had the heart to consolidate the best of the two kits and get rid of the surplus, despite not having a Classic Omega or a Tradition. And when I got my Legend II last year, I got a matching red hose for it but not any other tools because I had such a surplus of Kirby tools that it seemed redundant to acquire any more, even if none of them are red. By the same reasoning, I have not sought to acquire any tools for my Heritage II Legend. That said, I have also not been above bastardizing things when necessity arises. I have a little Eureka canister that came to me with only a powered hose and rather than sink any additional funds into it, I modified the tip of the hose handle to accept an Electrolux wand and power nozzle, which worked great and kept me from buying anything else for it, other than a small supply of bags. |
Post# 434903 , Reply# 14   11/12/2020 at 21:44 (1,231 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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As for automobile owner's manuals, I wonder if they just get put in the house somewhere and forgotten about when the car is sold/traded? I like to take mine out of the car sometimes to learn about certain features or things I might not know about the vehicle.
I noticed we had manuals for things we no longer owned. Usually I try to be careful to keep everything together when selling/donating. Last time we had a garage sale, I looked through our manual stash and made a mental note of the things for sale that we had the manuals for. As the items sold, I went back and grabbed the manual as the customer was paying and gave it to them. Might as well give it to the buyer instead of throwing it away, and the customers were all pleasantly surprised. I even put the manuals out with things we throw away. When I collect vintage fans I also really enjoy having the booklets and hang tags for models I have. I've been fortunate to get a few originals. Other times I print them out from the internet. |
Post# 434909 , Reply# 16   11/13/2020 at 01:09 (1,231 days old) by rivstg1 (colorado springs)   |   | |
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Post# 434932 , Reply# 18   11/13/2020 at 11:15 (1,231 days old) by human (Pines of Carolina)   |   | |
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Jon wrote:
Car owners manuals often get out in the house and people trade cars often on impulse and don’t bother to be diligent about returning its parts to the cars. Even the spare sets of keys which in this day and age are quite pricey to replace since most are now just remotes or remote key combination devices. Then on a future clean out they are found and thrown away because the car is long gone. I reply: I have two owners manuals from previous cars. One was a duplicate, which I saw no reason to leave with the car, and the other I kept for somewhat sentimental reasons when I donated the car to my local public radio station. As for remotes, most of the used cars I've bought in recent years have, at most, had only one remote, if any at all. There's enough of a market for second-hand remotes that they often get sold off separately. Pairing a remote to a car is often a pretty easy task although some cars do require the use of a scan tool. |
Post# 434958 , Reply# 20   11/13/2020 at 18:12 (1,230 days old) by detroitdirtbag (Bottom of the Bag)   |   | |
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Some how I wind up with crevasse tools from other vacs, is it crevasse or cre-vas? Maybe I got a CT fetish. 😂
When I sell a car, if the guy gets me down in price, he gets hose, one car I kept the nice wheels and tires, the jam one drove off with steel rims and snow times. Lol. I just sold a vehicle, i got asking price, the guy got everything. |
Post# 434974 , Reply# 22   11/13/2020 at 22:57 (1,230 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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You are right tools on eBay can be expensive, especially vintage tools for Hoover, Eureka, etc. But sometimes it's easiest to find them on there.
Has anyone noticed with older canister vacuums found at thrift store, garage sales, etc, that often the only tool still with the machine is the crevice tool? When I found my Hoover Constellation it only had its crevice tool. It was very dirty and looked like it had been left out for years in a garage or other dusty place. My guess is it was used out in the shed or garage to vacuum out cars, so they just used the crevice tool for that. Many of those videos I see on YouTube of vacuuming cars, they only use the crevice tool, no upholstery tool or dusting brush. Which to me doesn't make sense! Use the right tool for the right job. Or does that require too much thought? LOL I think these days people often don't bother using the vacuum attachments much, or if they do just use the end of the hose. People these days seem to think a vacuum is just meant to clean the floor. Hence, no carpets, no need for a vacuum cleaner. And yes, it drives me nuts when I see vacuums come into a thrift store with attachments and then they go missing. I saw a Kenmore Intuition come into a local thrift store - with all its attachments in the right spot. A few months later they were all gone! I later found the turbo tool sitting in a bin. No idea what happened. My guess is someone saw the tools on the machine and thought Oh I could use this or that tool. Whoever got it later could have had all the tools if they got it a few weeks earlier. My Electrolux was similar - had all its tools but I didn't buy it at first. By the time I did, floor brush and extra wand set had gone missing. |
Post# 434997 , Reply# 24   11/14/2020 at 09:22 (1,230 days old) by human (Pines of Carolina)   |   | |
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Real1shep wrote:
The tool caddies and/or how you vacuum and carry all those tools around at the same time has always been an issue too....with various designed caddies or attachment 'boxes'. I reply: Yes, this is the one reason my Electrolux Discovery Plus has languished in the barn for almost five years. Its onboard tool storage makes it so ungainly to use that it's almost unusable. Honestly, if I had it to do over again, I would have taken the tool brackets off the machine instead of cobbling together a set of tools for it. It wasn't until a year or two later when I rescued a Discovery II from the curb that I came to truly appreciate just how good the Electrolux uprights are. I think this is a problem with onboard tool storage in general. People start jettisoning the tools they never use to lighten their load and those tools eventually find their way to the bottom of the closet and eventually the trash. For that reason, I much prefer the plastic tool caddies that Kirby and Electrolux used to offer with their uprights. They keep everything orderly and accessible. All in all, I think Electrolux really got it right when it came to including the essentials—tools that people would actually use and not a bunch of frivolous stuff that makes for a cool demo but in the real world will never be used. |
Post# 435004 , Reply# 25   11/14/2020 at 10:43 (1,230 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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The attachments on the retro Connie are interesting. I'm told they have the Hoover logo on them, but they seem to have been made by a third party. They look nearly identical to the fit all tools on eBay. In fact you can buy the whole set of three small tools that look identical and the holder for about $10.
The hard floor brush on those can be bought on eBay for about $12. Kenmore used the same tool with their TOL uprights. Which was kind of odd they'd include one, since the TOL models usually had a clutch or separate brushroll motor anyway. Usually that tool and its wand are missing, since they didn't fit on board the machine like the other tools. The Kirby attachment caddies are kind of neat. They harken back to the time when uprights and canisters would include cardboard carrying caddies. I expect most people rarely use the Kirby attachments, given it takes extra steps to remove the nozzle and put the hose on. Often times I see them in thrifts with no tools, but sometimes they have everything. |
Post# 435047 , Reply# 27   11/15/2020 at 10:31 (1,229 days old) by eurekaprince (Montreal, Canada)   |   | |
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I did not like storing the 3 small tools on my stainless steel retro Constellation. They stuck out too much and would scratch my walls and furniture every time the cleaner would go sailing into them. Those black tools must be coming out of one factory in China because they are all over the place on different vacs. They are the same three small tools you get with each Numatic Henry vac.
I also did not care for the dusting brush: the bristles were not soft and though they are meant to look like the old “horse hair” brushes we used to get on Kenmores and Eurekas, they are not nearly as soft. |
Post# 435065 , Reply# 28   11/15/2020 at 16:24 (1,229 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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That's disappoining the bristles are not soft. I bought what I assume to be a generic round dusting brush on eBay to go with a Bissell Plus I have that was missing. It has horsehair bristles and I was pleased with how soft they are.
I have a TOL red Kenmore Progressive canister I got about 8 years ago and it was noted as having horsehair bristles on its dusting brush as well as floor brush but they literally feel about as stiff as my toothbrush! I also ordered another brush for it recently from one of the newer Elite models, because its smaller. Bristles on that are much fuller and also horsehair, but not much softer either. Very disappointing. They are not like the 80s/90s gray dusting brush horsehair bristles were. They really need to improve on whatever material they are using. At least you can still get those as replacements, but they won't fit my Progressive with its weird hose end. |
Post# 435199 , Reply# 31   11/18/2020 at 21:01 (1,225 days old) by ridgidwd0670 (se wood co ohio)   |   | |
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I've had good luck finding genuine Compact/TriStar tools (crevice, dusting & upholstery) in clear/glitter (even the upholstery tool grille) & white.
Unfortunately they weren't available in turquoise I also found 'greige' Aerus/Electrolux combo tools & crevice tool for my 2100, which happens to b my daily driver lately I have 3 spare sets of teal Electrolux combo tools & crevice tool (1205-era) However I haven't bothered looking for the above-floor hose & tools for my Eureka ESP bcuz I use it ONLY for vacing carpet |
Post# 435200 , Reply# 32   11/18/2020 at 21:26 (1,225 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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Yeah, I'm the same way with my Eureka Boss F&G. I was just thinking about this when I used it last weekend. I haven't had any interest in getting a set of tools for it, as for me it's a carpet vacuum only, and I don't really think about using an attachment converter with it. If I had a more vintage upright I'd probably get a tool set though just to have.
I have only one upright in my collection that I use regularly that has onboard tools and I don't use those much either. And I never really have for any of my mom's either, I prefer using a canister for that kind of cleaning. The only time I do use them is if I just happen to notice a small area like a baseboard or piece of furniture that needs dusting while I'm vacuuming the carpet. That's probably because I find the hoses on them too short and springy. My mom's previous Kenmore Quick Clean bagless upright had a habit of falling over on top of me when I tried to use the hose on it. My Kenmore Progressive upright is less prone to that, but I still think the best upright hose setup is a really long hose. |