Green (not avocado) Hoover Spirit

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panthera

panthera

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I have no idea when this vacuum was built, clearly it was a very budget model.

However - the motor is quite good (two-stage? It appears to have another turbine under the fixed vanes of the first), robust windings, well balanced and hefty brushes.

The plastic (which is everything) is quite good, no cracks or chips or dents. 

120VAC, 6.5 Amps, it was made for the North American market, but the build quality and design is way too high for the sh---t Hoover were producing in North America in that era. This is better than anything Dyson ever made. 

Reminds me of UK products back when they actually made things in the UK.

Any ideas when/where?

If Hoover in the US had continued with this quality they'd not be a name-tag brand today.

panthera-2020060712103207093_1.jpg
 
Cole/Brendan

Thank you!

Given the build quality, I assumed it was 1980s. Hoover in North America much after that was pure junk. Even then, they weren't doing this level of work, consistently. This must have been on the high end of the very wide scale they considered acceptable.

I would have like to have shot some photos of the clean up, but, really, there wasn't much to do. Did chop of a bit of the line cord and redid the crimp on fasteners with better ones. Everything - switch, motor, line cord is back to copper, so that pretty much lets the 70's out of the picture.

I've got new bags ordered, the NIB which came with it is about as porous as a plastic trash bag. I'm not going to replace the exhaust filter. It just did a bit of sound dampening and kept some of the carbon from the brushes back. Given how clean what was left of it was, and the nearly brand-new quality of the brushes and commutator, I think this was a very low hour vacuum.

I do miss the good Hoover days. 
 
reply#1 could be right about early...

... "Decade 80"Hoover upright from the early '80s does have about the same colors as the subject Spirit :) AFAIK,all US Hoovers were US made until about Y2K when "assembled in Mexico"started.
 
I know some 110vac Juniors were built in Wales

And shipped to North America. I had one. No doubt you're right about this, it's just surprisingly well made. It's not avocado green, despite the colour rendition. Is a lovely minty green.

IBAISAIC often does these older models on YouTube. Have to look up what he's done on this.

I hope we park this one where I can use it often - it's so delightfully green and roars and sucks quite decently.
 
The Hoovers of the OLDER days-NOT the CHEAP bagless crap they have now-Crappy machines with the Hoover name emblazoned on them.My Mom bought a Hoover Spirit suction only canister for the "fish camp" they built in Florida.The place had wood floors.I have a Spirit in my collection,Elebrity,Some old Convertibles and two Jrs.Those need bag gaskets.Otherwise their dump bags are in good condition.Some years ago a customet brought an England Made 120V Jr into the vac shop here for repairs.Mike was trying to get the customer to trade the machine in towards a new machine-no go!Don't blame them!!The Hoover Jr was green and in great condition-esp for its age.All I got to do was try it out before being returned to the customer.SAD that "Hoover" is such JUNK today!Its now a name only.
 
I've got a brown more deluxe Hoover Spirit from roughly that time frame.  Been in use for 35 years or so and is a tough little machine.  Mine has the cord reel and a full bag indicator, bottom plate says made in Canton Ohio, 11.1 Amps  and for some reason the indicate 3.6 peak HP on the top of the machine.

 

I had an extra long hose made up for it, only use it for above the floor cleaning.  Carpets get the Kirby treatment..
 
Ahh, that's the Spirit.  Mine's 2-tone gray, pretty scuffed up.  That plastic is what Western Electric used to make phones out of.  Put a hose, motor brushes, switch, cut the frayed last foot off the cord.  Got it used in the mid 80s.

 

Got most parts at the vac store but they don't bother any more, not even bags.  Ebay has them and for a lot less in multi-packs.  Couple years ago, got the last brushroller the store had.  Bearings went out in the old one AND bristles worn down to a nub.

 

The "official" Hoover parts site (yeah right) doesn't recognize the model or any of the part numbers.  About as useful as the products are now.  Still expensive as if they were worth something which they're not.  Think if I were forced to replace it I'd go Panasonic.
 
When the chinese company TTI acquired Hoover in 2007 they promptly discontinued all parts, until that time you were still able to get parts for machines dating back to the early 50s

I have an early 80s JCPenney badged Spirit, it has the more deluxe power nozzle, but I mostly just use it for cleaning the car with. For a basic unit is works quite well
 
This is interesting

I've been going through a BOL phase lately - picked up a ROPER washer with a very short agitator stroke on a very deep tub and high agitator, the dial sets the temperature, two water level settings, that's it. Works really well and spins super fast for a DD.

This little vacuum, like the ROPER comes from an era in which inexpensive clearly didn't mean cheap trash.

Hoover did go through better and worse periods. We have one from the mid-20s (1920's, that is) which appears to have been carefully machined and then had the electrical components fitted by a manic elf who was a failure at smearing frosting on cookies

A couple of post-war units whose Bakelite moldings were even finally polished on the non-visible side. Convertibles which don't stop....then, sometime in the 1980s/90s it all turns awful.

Can't wait for the new bags to arrive. This one really puts a plastic bag to shame.
 
I could go with Jade or Teal. Or, for that matter,

Seafoam. Or anything but avocado. Hate, hate, HATE that appliance colour.

Anyhoo, the new bags are supposed to arrive today. They can't be worse than the porous as a plastic garbage bag NIB which came with this lovely little vacuum.

As to best cleaning...well, no. We've got several 1930's tank cleaners, each one of which can clean rings around this. But - it's not a bad little sucker, not bad at all.

We're keeping it around for daily vacuuming, at least for a while. Kinda cute.
 
No, there are much worse...

The Spirit gets such a bad reputation by other collectors, simply because it has a plastic body, and not a metal body. I don't feel that is fair, after dealing with vacuum cleaners since I was in pampers basically. I don't recall EVER recall seeing a Hoover Spirit with broken body parts or casings. Plus, the motor bearings, and bearing casings, and carbon brushes, armature and field are the same as the more expensive Celebrity, just lower amperage, and smaller fan and fan case.

I have a Mist Grey model from 1982, part of the first line. Mine is the model with the Powermatic. I find that it is a MORE then sufficient compact canister vacuum cleaner! They Spirit was made all the way up until the mid 90s. The last were re branded the Hoover Runabout, and were also a Kmart exclusive.
 
My Spirit lost a wheel at some point, so it limps along.  I think I dropped it or bumped it going up or down stairs and it hit the wheel just right and it broke off.  Always meant to go to my local vac junk shop and pick a replacement up but it's fine as is. 

 

I'm down to my last K bag so I need more,  Any recommendations?  Thinking Filtrete.
 
my last K bag

I was too and the vac store quit ordering them.  The 'official' Hoover parts site doesn't know what a 'Spirit' is.  Think I ended up on ebay, bag of 12 "Envirocare"s for much less than I was paying the brick store for the same thing. 

Also got a multi-pack of powernozzle belts.

 

Yes, back the machine into a wall and the wheel snaps at the hub.  I went through a bunch of wheels back when I was doing a 1200SF 3br house floor to ceiling every week.  The ceiling part was because the house had these micro corner spiders that get out of hand if you let them.  This place now is 300SF with Putt-Putt carpet, plus I don't much care any more

so the vac only has to run sporadically.

 

 
 
I like that minty pastel green. And there are at least two shades of green the Spirit came in. One being the mint or seafoam. The other was a darker green called Slate. That was also the green used on the Dimension 1000.

Back in the 70s and 80s, and perhaps before that, Hoover continued the use of their colors and color combinations from year to year and even model to model.

The Celebrity is an example of a machine that was painted metal and the Spirit was it's all plastic replacement yet they kept some of the same colors such as the mint, the beige, and the lighter blue.

The first Dimensions would have similar color combinations in the mid 80s.
 

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