Restoration of 1963 Hoover Dial-A-Matic Model 1100 - Part One - Overview 

A video about Hoover motors would be very interesting, It would be cool to see other makes too and how they compare against each other.

Thank you for this video! While I do love used and vintage vacuum cleaners, they are sometimes a labor of love. You got this! Thank you again for everything!

I just can’t thank you enough for doing this with the Hoover Dial A Matic. The thing about the brush roll I didn’t even know about and that makes a big difference in cleaning I’m sure. This is the best 6 am in the morning surprise ever and I thank you for this gift. Now how can I return such a wonderful gift you have given??? 😊

Fantastic video! I have the same relationship you do with these machines. I absolutely love all my dial a matics but absolutely despise working on them. What a nightmare they can be. On all my dial a matics I have grey or brown hoses but I’m 90% sure that they did also come in that off-white on the earliest machines. The plug is original FYI.

These Dial-A-Matic's are quite a great piece of vacuum history that forever changed the industry to what it is today. I own the last version, the U6039 (that also is a self propelled model) before it was replaced by the Concept One, and it's a nice piece, but I can imagine it's not going to be fun to work on, especially since it's a self propelled model.

Awesome video Steve 👍👍

Very much looking forward to seeing the series of videos on the refurb of your Dail-A-Matic. I can remember seeing the Hoover Convertible in our local electricity board showroom when I was a child.

That's so cool you have one of these! Really interesting how many seemingly obvious tricks were missed on the first pass. I can confirm that the very next model after this one (excact model number escapes me, but I know it's dark green) included multiple improvements. They added the bag check indicator, easy to remove hose, and turned the brushbar helix the right way around!

Love it!!! I have the American Bicentennial DAM with power drive and tools...got it from a local thrift store and summoned up enough butchness to change out it's broken headlight socket, harvested from one of my spares...Knock on wood: At least 12 years since and never needed to change out its lightbulb........yet.....🤪

Thank you for this sir. Please do make a video (or few!) about motor-led design! I myself was always interested in fan design & positioning in the airflow - whereby for example the clean-air approach required much faster airspeed & wattage to run.

We love the colours and design aesthetics of these machines. It is easy to overlook the shortcomings when it looks so great. We are fascinated to see under the petticoat and see what's revealed. Wishing you lots of patience and luck over the course of this restoration. 🤞

Thanks!

Excellent video, as always. I only wish I had the time to respond to more of them (for instance there’s a whole stack of interesting information I could share about that moulded plug on your Vax 101 alone, but time prevents me from doing so thus far), and of course - as is the case internet wide - it is almost impossible to know if what we are typing is helping or being enjoyed by others. Indeed, I am rarely able to watch your videos, but I do like to listen to them through headphones while working. It was while listening to this video that I felt compelled to do some research into the helix on the roller…my interest was well and truly piqued here and I have given this far too much head room, hence now finishing off with a reply as I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Back in 1992 I was asked to change the roller brushes on a Hoover 1124 Convertible, and I distinctly remember that despite going to the shop and buying the right length of brushes, I had no idea the direction of the “stopper” on the end that sits nearest to each end of the roller was the exact opposite of what was already on the cleaner. This came to light when I attempted to fit them and they would not fully engage. In other words, the stopper on the brushes I bought was in the direction of the Junior and Senior (indeed I think the brushes I was sold were made for a Senior), and the 1124 was the opposite. Now, seeing your video, seeing the direction of the helix, and comparing that to many online pictures of Junior and Senior brush rollers, I noted that your brushes fit the same way as both of these cleaners, which is unlike the one I had. This then led me to Google a video of an 1124, which returned an excellent result from Sam Watson, in which he rebuilds said cleaner, and you can clearly see the helix on his roller is the opposite from yours. Thus, it would seem that on some - and perhaps all (you have several so can check, I’m sure) - of the later and / or UK versions had the opposite helix from the early US model you have here. Presumably Hoover changed it for all the reasons you mentioned, although we could assume the helix was originally designed in the direction that yours was in order to make use of the same brush-roll inserts and brush strips already used by the Senior (US Convertible), and then modified accordingly after going on sale. I think it’s worth me mentioning that the direction of the helix on both the Senior and Junior is “right” on the one side and “wrong” on the other, as one side sweeps towards the centre suction channel and one sweeps away from it…in all these years this is a point I have never, ever, considered, and yet it is so interesting…to get the full effect they really should have had one brush shaped in the opposite way, to ensure both sides sweep to the centre, though as before, this would have required a modified roller insert. Do you suppose the fact that the brushes on the Senior and Junior were designed as they were had any impact on the cleaning performance? Interestingly, earlier I had a good look at the underside of a Dyson DC14 Brush Control as this was the only vacuum to hand, and the helix on that is in two directions (it changes in the middle), so one end sweeps into the suction channel and the other away from. From here, I could not help but Google a video of the Hoover Starlight to see what direction that takes, and - just like the 1124- it too has brushes that take the opposite direction from the Junior and Senior. I never knew that, but then I worked on so few of these (despite their popularity, no one in the repair trade seemed to want to repair them, and fewer still dared to display a reconditioned model in their shop window, for fear of all the grief that it could bring with it further down the line). Of course, in all of this, it begs the question as to why some brush rollers have twisted rows of bristles, where as others - such as the Electrolux 400/500/Twin Turbo - had them in a straight line…and there’s no doubting the performance of those cleaners, though I think it’s fair to say that most cleaners past and present have used twisted rows. Maybe it reduces wear on the bristles and / or the belt, do you suppose? On another note, we know the Convertible was far from a popular cleaner in the UK, and it would be so easy to attribute this to the weight of the cleaner and the size of the price tag, however, from the sales material I have seen for these cleaners, the explanation as to what advantages it had is shockingly poor. Indeed, having worked in electrical retail in the 1990s and early 2000’s, I would liken the Convertible to that of the Dyson 2-drum washing machine, in the sense that the advantages were not at all clear when compared to regular and cheaper models. For example, Dyson used to make much of the fact that their washing machine could wash in a fraction of the time of regular machines, but in reality, when demonstrating this machine to customers, the response was universal: “but the machine over there has a quick-wash button, so why this?”. And it was true; the fact that Dyson was selling the concept of a PROPER wash in a lot less time was neither here nor there to a customer who neither cared about the quality of the wash, nor was willing to spend upwards of £900 on a Dyson washing machine when a decent model from Hotpoint or Hoover could be purchased for under £350. It is the same with the Hoover Convertible - for Hoover to put it on sale with the blandest of mentions that the cleaner is effectively two machines in one does not go into anywhere near enough depth to differentiate from this machine from all the other upright cleaners that came with tools as standard. Indeed, I once remember a customer in my store coming in to buy a Hotpoint condenser tumble dryer for £299 and left after purchasing - on her instance I might add - an Indesit washer-dryer, because she became fixated on the mindset that for the price of a machine that did one job, she could buy one that did two. I have never forgotten that, and it shows how a poor understanding of what is on sale can really influence the mindset of the consumer. Interestingly, it does seem that once the Convertible went off sale, Hoover backed away from the clean-fan idea until the arrival of the Turbopower 2, and I can’t say I blame them, as it did seem that the consumer was none the wiser about the two types of system, particularly as Electrolux also (in my opinion) massively undersold the advantages of their clean-fan motors. Thus, if consumers are not asking for something and / or don’t know or care about it, then why cater for it? After all, I know of countless examples where owners of a clean-fan machine then replaced it with a dirty-fan style, most likely as they didn’t know or care about what went on inside of it. On a final note, have you ever noticed how close and yet so far Hoover were with that external hose on the Convertible, in terms of making a cleaner with integrated tools? If only they’d made the hose longer and hooked it around the machine, we wouldn’t have waited until the mid 1980s to get the style of cleaner we have now.

Seward Nebraska! That’s just a half hour from me!

Sounds like they did it as a parts bin machine. Apart from the new concept they minimised costs as much as possible. Hoover cost cutting and poor quality parts surelynot. 😕