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Author Topic: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!  (Read 13107 times)

Offline beko1987

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The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« on: May 21, 2018, 08:59:45 pm »
I have an hour or so spare, and 3 hours battery on the Thinkpad X60t (so 2 hours of actual use..), so let's start this quite mammoth thread! Mr Stuart threw a box of goodies my way a while ago!


It is a magnificent old girl, and in need of some titivation before it can take pride of place in the Museum!

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This image dates when the refurb began...



Drop the cable. No fancy new world rotating cord hooks here

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Take the bag off

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The remains of the bag strap got removed

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And the Bag Slide taken off

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Next up was to remove the bag from the flange (fnarr). This oversized bolt was removed eventually after a squirt of plusgas to get it started



Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!


Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2018, 09:06:28 pm »
The seal on the bag flange was in good order, but I dare not remove it incase it suddenly became not in such good order...

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The bag got a good vacuum off with the Beko vac

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Which showed that the filtration can't quite cope with 40+ year old fine dust!

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But it did a good job, and the bag went into a bowl of very warm water and washing detergent for a good soak

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Whilst that did its thing, we can take the handle off, and remove the securing clamp bolt

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The handle lifts out now, unplugging itself as it goes

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Starting at the top, the 2 screws holding the switch in place can be removed. These have to pop out of the rubber, which can be a bit nerve racking at this age...

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Then the plate lifts off, revealing the rush job wiring we did in the unboxing video

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Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2018, 09:14:31 pm »
The switch wiring is insulated from the handle by this fireproof piece of card (or asbestos, who knows!)

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Hello cloth covered wires!

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They were all removed, this cleaner switches the neutral flow

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I then thought I had broken something when said piece of maybe safe cardboard fell out, but worked out it just slips into the rubber gasket, which is fine!

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I dare not attempt to remove the cable exit from the switch plate. These usually perish after all this time, this is in good order.

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Moving down to the base of the handle now to get the plug out. It is held in on these old girls with a fibre pin, which just taps out

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The sleeve can now be slid off without having to open it up to get around the fibre pin

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With massive trepidation, as this part went wrong on my Hoover 875, and caused a year or so delay as I found a replacement handle, i wiggled the plug out. Only the wafer thin cap which is hidden in the handle anyway snapped, it can be glued up later.

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Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #3 on: May 21, 2018, 09:20:15 pm »
The long lost bag spring and the remains of the strap fall out now. Fascinating to wonder how many years this has been hidden in here!

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The strap tore with barely a brush, it was fully rotten

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Lovely detail on the plug

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Then I had a look at the handle wires. I was expecting this tbh, my 875 and old 262 did the same, when you bent the wire, the rubber and cloth insulation just cracked and crumbled

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Time to remove the bag strap wheel, 1 screw holds it onto the handle

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I could not get a photograph of it, it's too small for my camera even in macro mode but 1933 was stamped into this. The same date stamp as on my 875 from 1938, but I imagine they made thousands of these wheels and just used them until they changed to the slide and spring we all know and love today

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We can now move onto the main show

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Belt guard off

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!


Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #4 on: May 21, 2018, 09:34:32 pm »
Next the middle belt guard comes off with its 4 screws

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You can see where years of floppy belts have brushed against it

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Next the baseplate can be lifted, which was tricky with it being full of grit

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Eventually it heaved up

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And the brushroll unclipped

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The brushroll dismantles in the usual way, one end cap off, then the other one and axle pulled out

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End caps were very clean, just a bit of surface rust which is good as these are pretty unobtanium now

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One bearing set removed

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #5 on: May 21, 2018, 09:39:48 pm »
The tension washer had long died though

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Other side

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Unlike more modern brushrolls, the bearing carriers do not easily come out, and I sure as heck wasnt drilling the rivets out so they stayed put

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Next out were the front wheels

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Remove the circlip and withdraw the wheels. One wheel has a chip out of the shoulder, but is still fine

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The wheel axle is held on with a nut the other side of the casting, and a washer

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Next, I removed the 3 tiny split pins that held the emblem on

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Revealing 80+ years of dirt!

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Sadly this emblem is very worn, it should be painted orange with brass highlights, but the orange has long gone. After discussion with the Bossman, we left it alone, as it looks nicely worn rather than silly bright orange!

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #6 on: May 21, 2018, 09:45:26 pm »
The main bumper is in remarkably good condition, and held in with much bigger split pins

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And removed

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Looking a bit naked now!

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Time to remove the wiring from the handle bail now and HOLY CR@P

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This is a tad more scary than the internal wiring, because you can easily pick the machine up exactly here, which would help you along the way to being  :dead-dyson: or at least quite poorly with a worse hairstyle than mine quite quickly...

The wiring unclips from the bail and the plug falls out

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Time to start the interesting bit

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Mmmm yummy

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This is the original (I think) Hoover logo, before the modern one came to be

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #7 on: May 21, 2018, 09:57:14 pm »
3 more screws and the whole motor assembly lifts off the chassis. This is what is called a Coffee Can machine, before Henry Dreyfuss came along and hid it all under silly bakelite and new fangled plastic hoods

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Rear wheels now

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One comes off with a little circlip

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And reveals what looks like a grub screw, but is actually a long bolt

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With this bolt removed, and the adjustment knob spun up until it unscrews from the adjustment bracket

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The whole thing drops right off

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Then splits fully apart

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Sadly the adjustment knob doesn't come off, so I left it alone! Again, unobtainable...

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Bag flange bolts undo next, they unbolt from the rear and unscrew, they aren't coming off in a hurry

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #8 on: May 21, 2018, 10:02:59 pm »
Time to start on the motor, and wow! That is a pin, flung through the cast iron (I think) fan!

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Got rid of that before I gave myself TB or anything

Then the belt pulley got clamped, the spindle held still with a screwdriver and off it all cracked!

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Under the fan sit the spacer washers and standoff

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Cripes, we have forgotten about the bag, let's go and have a look...

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Crikey, I bet you would catch all sorts of exotic diseases if you drank some of that...

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That picture didn't show the thick layer of sand in the bottom of the bowl. I rinsed the bag under cold running water a bit until the water ran a bit clearer, then turned the bag inside out (or right way round, can't remember now) and refilled the bowl with fresh warm water and more detergent for another few hours.

Back to the motor now!

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But we need to be the other end, to remove this circlip

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #9 on: May 21, 2018, 10:09:46 pm »
The circlip releases the top cap, under which sits a conical spring

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And under that spring sits a screw which holds the armature into the housing

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With that undone, and the 4 screws under the fan removed, the armature can be withdrawn from the motor

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I'm amazed these old motors run with the gunk on the field coil, I have seen loads like this!

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Possibly the main issue with this old girl is the carbon brushes, but there is a hack for that which we will look at upon re-assembly

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The fancase plate can be tapped off the armature

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Time to remove the bearing from the fancase cover, and another circlip holds it in

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Then a top cover plate and felt washer come out

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Then the bearing itself. And these old bearings really are a treat! No mass produced 608ZZ's here!

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #10 on: May 21, 2018, 10:13:50 pm »
Actual proper ball bearings!

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And the plate is empty!

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Crikey, my camera is going very black where I hold it now...

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But before we can remove the coil, we need to remove the handle bail plug to pull it all through

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The wires are soldered to the pins, and one snapped as soon as I looked at it funny

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But, because this is being re-wired, I cut the other one off as well!

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The protecting spring can be removed from the wires now

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And the field coil unbolted and withdrawn

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The bakelite carbon brush caps are unscrewed (the brushes came out from inside when we lifted the armature out)

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #11 on: May 21, 2018, 10:18:47 pm »
And the last picture in the last post shows the carbon brush holders and their insulating sleeves removed, a tiny grub screw holding them in!

Back to the top of the motor housing now, and the bearing itself has a protective cover, held in with the armature screw

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And it cane be removed as well, making the pair free!

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The motor serial tag was removed

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As was the exhaust vent diffuser, which rather than being a silly bit of foam like you get nowadays is actual metal

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The motor housing is/was sealed to the main chassis with sealant. This was not as flexible as it once was so was scraped off

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We jump back to the internal handle wiring and unscrew the wires from the plug

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Then clean the field coil

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #12 on: May 21, 2018, 10:23:33 pm »
We are disassembled now! The bearings got a good soak in Tardis, then Petrol, which cleaned them up a treat, with a bit of brushing when the solution got changed to get the gritty stuff out

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Turns out they are SKF bearings!

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I then discovered 2 more tiny grub screws

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Which came from here

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Which enabled the handle bail to be removed from the main chassis

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So all this could be boxed up

Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #13 on: May 21, 2018, 10:31:22 pm »
All the brightwork got boxed up, and sent to Dorian, who is HooverLux on youtube, and a pretty bloody top bloke, who collects Kirby's. And as he collects Kirbys, he knows about polish and such, so worked his MAGIC

Once the parts came back, they really did look astonishing. I had the top motor cover on my desk at work all day!

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Fun over, we can lay everything out

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And begin re-assembly. Which is where I am going to leave it for tonight, as I need to get to bed. Stay tuned for the re-assembly and testing, and to see if Stuart himself is happy with the results!

Bye for now


Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline beko1987

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Re: The Hoover 725 - Restoration, Repair and Refurbishment!
« Reply #14 on: May 28, 2018, 07:59:31 pm »
Right, I have a few minutes whilst Amy gets Charlie to sleep, so let's do some more on this!

The first thing we need is some 'orrible modern white cable

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Specifically the inside bits, measured for length plus a cm for luck with the old motor wires

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Some fairly terrible soldering was performed

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And after some heatshrink was slid over the wires, all looked good, and safe!

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Now it was time to get fingerprints all over the lovely metalwork! First was to refit the handle bail onto the hood

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It had been a month or so since I disassembled it all, and I had bagged everything up so it was easier to come back to

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It was a bit of a struggle but it went on eventually, a nice lick of grease around all the moving parts for good measure!

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Next, the cable protection spring was slid over the motor wires, but the other way round so I could hide the slightly damaged part behind the motor housing. The plug was also fitted

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Now, time to reassemble the motor, and I had help! Years ago I bought a PDF of a Hoover Service Manual, covering everything from the Model 0 to the 1950s, which catered perfectly for the motor! Used my Thinkpad X60 Tablet (the very same I am writing this on in fact) to read it as I worked!

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Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

 

 

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