Author Topic: DC03 clear - broken cleaner head moulding (Read 5162 times)

Gr8h8m · « **on:** February 17, 2023, 01:58:45 pm »

Hello everyone

Tragically, I dropped my DCO3-clear machine whilst giving a lecture on it this week to my design students, which was rather upsetting to say the least.
To be honest, I felt like crying!

As a result the main cleaner head moulding is now very badly cracked across the whole of its front top panel and 2 large pieces of (clear blue) plastic broke also off around the RHS wheel cover too.

I bought the machine new in late 1990s as I was a key member of the Design team at Dyson between 1995 & 1996 and wanted to have one after all the work that went into it. It has never been used and is (well was) in mint condition, even being kept safely in it's original box for well over 20 years now. I also worked on the DC01 and DC02, back in the day too.

Stuart at Manchester Vacs suggested posting here on the forum in case, by any chance, anyone had a spare clear DC03 cleaner head that I might be able to use as a replacement?
Repairing it with a suitable adhesive would never hide the serious injuries it has had and I'd ideally like to return it to its former glory again if at all possible.

I've attached the (now no longer available) eSpares listing of the part that I need - just the main plastic moulding, not the assembly.

Any thoughts or ideas would be most appreciated.

cheers

Graham

MadeinHolland · « **Reply #1 on:** February 19, 2023, 07:13:07 pm »

hi Graham
Not able to offer help, but did look on several sites here in continental Europe if any DC03 clear popped up. I managed to get 2 DC05’s from France, but they are much more common. Your history and story is a fascinating one, do you have any idea how many DC03 clears might have been produced in the first place?
Hope some help will come from somewhere soon!
Arjan

Gr8h8m · « **Reply #2 on:** February 20, 2023, 10:12:35 am »

Hi Arjan
Many thanks for the positive reply and also for looking anyway - that's another good lead for me to keep my eye out beyond the UK shores.

I'm afraid that I don't know how many clear DC03s were manufactured in the end, but I doubt Dyson would have predicted the DC03 machine to be for sale for so long either. For the clear models they were of course, like many other designs of the time, following in Apple's footsteps after their phenomenal success with the fruity iMac G3s in lime (lime green), strawberry (pinkish-red), blueberry (royal blue), grape (purple), and tangerine (orange-yellow). We nicknamed the DC03 the 'home-alone' model internally as it was the first Dyson 'lightweight' and aimed specifically at the apartment demographic rather than the previous DC01 and DC02 family-size machines.

Personally, I worked on the initial proof-of-principles twin tube 3D prototypes - from blue foam mock-ups to scratch built plastic full sized representations (that fully worked and could be tested for efficiency etc.). I also did a lot of development on the early clutch mechanism concepts to disengage the new brush bar design for extra safety - against little fingers and carpet wear.

Fun times... it was a lot smaller company then and all done at Malmesbury!

MVacs · « **Reply #3 on:** March 02, 2023, 06:54:19 pm »

I did the round-robin email to a few collectors and folks in the trade as you know, but I've also just put a link here on our FB page to see if that flushes one out.