Polski odkurzacz RFSG (ok. 1953-56) z silnikiem SK-5 (1961)

W tym nagraniu obejrzymy kolejny z najstarszych polskich odkurzaczy, produkowanych po wojnie od wczesnych lat 50-tych w Rzeszowskiej Fabryce Sprzętu Gospodarskiego. Jeden z tych modeli oglądaliśmy już w dostępnym na tym kanale filmie, gdzie sporo było mowy o historii tych urządzeń:

Tutaj zajmiemy się odkurzaczem, na przegląd którego ostatnio zabrakło czasu. Oczywiście zajrzymy do niego do środka. W odkurzaczu znajduje się niestety nieco późniejszy, wymieniony kiedyś silnik typu SK-5 z Fabryki Wodomierzy we Wrocławiu z 1961 roku. Oryginalny model silnika z tych odkurzaczy zobaczyć można w poprzednim odcinku. Wymienimy także zniszczony przewód zasilający i poprawimy mocowanie pokrywy silnika. Sprawdzimy działanie samego silnika i odkurzacza po zmontowaniu. Oczywiście nie zabraknie odniesień do historii i do innych modeli odkurzaczy oraz silników.

Poniżej ponownie udostępniam na moim dysku sieciowym kilka dodatkowych materiałów na temat tych wczesnych polskich odkurzaczy:

Instrukcja obsługi odkurzacza elektrycznego:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ImfN3w5o2Hwqz-ciWNfSBvTG1Iz_KDGz/view?usp=sharing

Fragmenty kroniki zakładów Zelmer (Warszawa 1986):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kXcZs3wzeXzytgPdcC_rsmmAseN7dKpa/view?usp=sharing

Fragment książki T. Górczyński i W. Trusz „Domowe urządzenia radio-elektryczne” (Warszawa 1961): https://drive.google.com/file/d/11FwNkpnX-ZBr2oQVkKnpIj2XD7A3O_CY/view?usp=sharing

And in this episode we will only deal with this vacuum cleaner. In many ways they are very similar to each other. Cool and I think even the original dust bag. Now I should be able to remove this motor cover. Unfortunately, we will not see what original motor was probably in this vacuum cleaner. There is a connection, there isn’t… 8 mm – 6,50 mm X 8 mm Well, this is the whole family of SK-5, SK-5a, SK-5a-1 motors. Here you can see quite nicely how the rotor is turning. I can compare with the original cable how much insulation I have to remove. That’s it, more or less… It holds up very nicely. I don’t have a connection. I turn it on, I have… Hello, today I would like to invite you to another episode devoted to old Polish vacuum cleaners, and in fact the first post-war models of Polish vacuum cleaners produced in the then Rzeszów Household Equipment Factory (RFSG) in Rzeszów. In the previous episode, we didn’t have time to take a closer look at this vacuum cleaner, and that’s what I’d like to focus on today. But I will briefly remind you or I will say it for people who have not seen the previous recording about these vacuum cleaners, what we talked about, what we did last time. First of all, we spent a lot of time, probably half an hour, reviewing the available literature. The chronicle of the Zelmer plant published in 1986 is such a treasure trove of knowledge about the first years of vacuum cleaner production in Rzeszów, the 1950s and the beginning of the 1950s. And here we actually read several such extensive chapters, which described the conditions in which these vacuum cleaners were created. There was a production process of these vacuum cleaners or an assembly process of these vacuum cleaners described, including the names of the workers who were involved in it. We also looked at a book called "Home Radio-Electrical Devices", which was very useful for many recordings. And here – let me just find it – there is also a section on old vacuum cleaners. This is a book published in 1961, so it was actually back in the days when these vacuum cleaners were very widely used, although newer models have already appeared. Anyway , this book has such illustrations. I’ll display them on the side here. I hope this will fit, showing diagrams and drawings of the construction of exactly this type of vacuum cleaner. And finally, in the previous episode, we also read fragments of a one-page user manual, which I have here, for these exact vacuum cleaners. In the description of this recording, I will once again include links to scans of fragments of the publications we talked about, so you can easily download and view them. And if you want to learn more about it , be sure to check out this previous episode. I will post a link to it at the end of this recording. And of course I will also include it in the description of this recording. But so that this previous episode was not only devoted to literature and archival research, in the previous episode we managed to review this old vacuum cleaner from Rzeszów quite thoroughly. We disassembled it, took out the engine, tested it and assembled it. This vacuum cleaner works. You can see it in this previous episode. However, it doesn’t work quite correctly. First of all, the engine removed from it did not want to start at first, it was very difficult to rotate, even though the rotor was not blocked. But when you pushed it there a little, the engine finally clicked and started turning. And after installing the motor in the vacuum cleaner, it started almost immediately, but to tell the truth, the – as they wrote in the instructions here: "goodness of suction", i.e. the power of this vacuum cleaner was really symbolic. That is, he growled more than he sucked, in short. And I think that in these conditions it would be impossible to vacuum anything with it. At the next opportunity, however, the engine will need to be removed, inspected and seen to see what the problem is. Maybe it is simply worn out, but there must be something wrong with it that this vacuum cleaner is not able to work as it should. A very important issue that we touched on in the previous episode – let me show you, was the similarity of these first Polish vacuum cleaners from Rzeszów to old German vacuum cleaners Omega, produced in Altenburg before and after the war. I admit that I am not sure whether the Omega vacuum cleaner I am holding in my hand comes from before 1939, from the 1940s or from the early 1950s. Certainly not from the late 1950s. Because the Omega vacuum cleaner behind me comes from the late 1950s and which we have already seen in one recording. It is a completely different structure, a completely different device in terms of design and construction. However, there is no doubt that these Polish vacuum cleaners from Rzeszów were modeled on vacuum cleaners of this type, just like the Omega one. And even in the previous episode, we quickly disassembled this vacuum cleaner and took out the engine to compare it with the engine found in these Polish vacuum cleaners. In many respects, for example when it comes to the turbine casing, these engines were similar to each other, but they were two completely different engines, perhaps coming from slightly different years. If this vacuum cleaner actually comes from before the war, its engine is older than this one by at least ten, maybe even a dozen or so years. So it was not possible to determine whether this vacuum cleaner has an engine imported from East Germany, as was common in vacuum cleaners from Rzeszów produced in the late 1950s. Mainly engines were used there, let’s say until 1959 or even until the beginning of 1960, vacuum cleaners in Rzeszów were equipped with engines manufactured in the Oppach factory in Suhl in eastern Germany. I couldn’t explain what’s going on with this vacuum cleaner in the previous episode. This vacuum cleaner is a bit similar to the Omega, this engine is a bit similar to the Omega, but it is different. In the chronicle of the Zelmer plant it was written that vacuum cleaners and engines for the first Polish vacuum cleaners were manufactured at the WSK Warszawa-Grochów plant. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to figure it out because I’ve never seen electric motors manufactured there. However, there are no such markings on the engine in this vacuum cleaner that could help identify it. And here, of course, I count on your help. So that’s all about this vacuum cleaner. We watched it in the previous video. And today we will deal with this vacuum cleaner. I’ll put this vacuum cleaner aside in a moment, but I’ll tell you about one more important thing, so let them both stay here on our table for a moment. The important issue I mentioned is, of course, trying to date these vacuum cleaners. Well, if we’re talking about old devices, it’s worth knowing what period they come from, and it would also be good to know what year or more or less they come from. We also devoted quite a lot of attention to this issue in the previous episode. I mentioned to you that these vacuum cleaners were probably created in 1953 at the earliest. This would be evidenced by the nameplates with the name of the Rzeszowska Fabryka Sprzętu Gospodarskiego in Rzeszów, because until 1953 the factory was called the Rzeszowska Fabryka Rowerów i Wózków Dzinnych in Rzeszów. We saw such a model in one of the previous videos, one of the first models of Polish hair dryers produced there with the nameplate of the Rzeszowska Factory of Bicycles and Baby Strollers. So these vacuum cleaners were not created earlier than 1953. Yes, and until when could they have been produced? I told you in the previous episode that in 1955, the Rzeszów factory registered its round logo with the letters RFSG at the Patent Office. Wait a minute, this logo can be seen, among others, here on this Alfa vacuum cleaner, probably from 1957 or 1958. Well, we should actually assume that if these vacuum cleaners were created after 1956, when this logo should have been used, it should have been used on these You can find such a round RFSG logo in vacuum cleaners. However, it is not there here, although in fact on some later models, such as this model of the Gamma vacuum cleaner from 1957, because the date is on it, this round logo is not there. It is actually an ordinary nameplate, but it has much more data stamped on it, including the production date, price and engine properties. All this is not yet available on these vacuum cleaners. This Gamma vacuum cleaner is from 1957, as I told you. It still uses nickel-plated sheet metal covers for the air inlet and outlet, just like in these vacuum cleaners. Later, they were – sorry, I will reach for another exhibit – later, for example, in the Gamma II vacuum cleaner, they were replaced by such Bakelite covers. However, what actually distinguishes our vacuum cleaners from vacuum cleaners produced in 1957, like the Gamma one, or in 1958, like the Alfa one I showed, is that at that time, from 1957, the production of vacuum cleaners in Rzeszów had certainly started. was more orderly. Vacuum cleaners were already divided into different types, they had different factory markings, such as, for example, here on this Gamma vacuum cleaner, the marking A-4 and just like these trade names such as Alfa, Beta, Gamma, which were located on the side of the vacuum cleaners. This is not the case here yet. And there is no factory type marking on these plates either. I have the impression, I saw it somewhere in a photo on the Internet, that Beta vacuum cleaners, which were produced around the mid-1950s, were probably marked type A-1, although it seems to me that, contrary to appearances, they were not the first vacuum cleaners , because these vacuum cleaners appeared before them. Alfa vacuum cleaners have the marking type A-2, so it seems to me that the name Alfa and the marking A-2 were introduced after the Beta vacuum cleaners. However, the first devices were vacuum cleaners like the ones we have on the table today, which did not have either the trade name on the side of the vacuum cleaner or the factory marking type A-1, A-2, A-4. They were simply produced in Rzeszów as an "electric vacuum cleaner", and only later the production of these vacuum cleaners and the production of subsequent models was somehow organized. We also read about it in the chronicle of the Zelmer plant, that only somewhere in the second half of the 1950s, after a certain period of stagnation until 1956, from around 1956-57, the production processes and models of devices were organized, which were increasingly produced in Rzeszów. So, in my opinion, we are dealing here with one of the first vacuum cleaners produced in Rzeszów. These devices were certainly made between 1953 and 1957, but I would rather place them between 1953 and 1956. They do not have the logo registered in 1955, so perhaps this time period could be narrowed down to 1953 – 1955, i.e. these are the few years in which these vacuum cleaners could have been created. We are undoubtedly dealing with one of the first devices of this type produced after the war in the Rzeszów factory. Let me put this vacuum cleaner that we saw in the previous episode aside. I highly recommend all the documentation from the work on this vacuum cleaner, from its disassembly, tests and assembly. And in this episode we will only deal with this vacuum cleaner. I told you a little about him in the previous episode. I told you that I have had this vacuum cleaner relatively recently from one of the experts, collectors and enthusiasts of old vacuum cleaners from the Vacuum Cleaner Collectors group. Thank you very much for it and overall I am very happy with this vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner is in slightly worse condition than the one we just looked at. However, I have already cleaned that one in the meantime, so it seems to be in much better condition. However, from the outside it is quite nice. You have to take into account that this is an old device, so it has the right to look the way it does. Here it has wheels on the bottom, here there is one tire missing on the front wheel. But overall it is all in quite good condition. In very nice condition it is a painting of a vacuum cleaner. The air inlet and outlet covers are a bit tarnished and covered with rust and should be nicely nickel-plated, just like you saw on this green vacuum cleaner. Moreover, fragments of this nickel plating have been preserved quite well here. What is so unusual about this vacuum cleaner is definitely the air outlet. Normally it was located here, I’ll show it to you again… There was a casing here that actually caused this air outlet to be closed with a kind of "screen". Here, as you can see, there is a sheet metal pipe installed at the air outlet, but this is some home-made modification. It’s not… It’s not, it wasn’t made that way at the factory. Here you can even see that someone cut the air outlet cover, installed – probably soldered – from the inside, we’ll see it later, just such a pipe. Probably someone did it so that they could connect a hose here at the air outlet and use this vacuum cleaner as a blower, as a sort of compressor. I have already said it many times that this type of vacuum cleaners could be used, for example, to pump air to sprinklers, which could – I don’t know – even paint walls or spray plants, or even in newer models of Gamma II or Alfa K2 vacuum cleaners they were connected to the air outlet to the sockets provided for the hair dryer. So it’s a kind of modification, but in my opinion it’s quite cool, because you can see how users adapted this type of vacuum cleaners to their needs. There’s a nameplate here, maybe let’s take a look at that too. I’ll show you here – oh, maybe here on the side – a sign. The plate is a little faded, probably during some cleaning, but generally it is legible. Rzeszowska Farm Equipment Factory in Rzeszów, here is the number of the vacuum cleaner: 11,000 – I don’t know – 378, I think. And there is a voltage of 220 V. As I said, there is no other data, especially unfortunately the production date, on this plate. And the production date was not placed on these plates. There is probably the original power cord here. We also saw this in the previous video. The original plugin is here, I even think I can display a photo of it. A plug from the Olkuskie Zakłady Wytwórcze Wytwórcze Sprzętu Instalacyjny in Wierbka near Olkusz, marked with the symbol A-19. The plug is probably 6 A, 250 V. On the other page: Made in Poland and so: 6 A, 250 V. What is interesting about this vacuum cleaner? I have already mentioned this briefly, probably as part of the modification of this air outlet, an error was made here by mistake and the cable should have been led out here, where the switch is located. However, where the cable is now led out, there should be a switch. And then, after installing this cover, the switch would be centrally located here, just like this handle is. However, with this arrangement, the switch is tilted like this. And clearly this is the place – you can see from this screw – intended for letting out this cable. Perhaps it was done, I think it was, when modifying this vacuum cleaner, because I don’t think such a mistake was made at the factory. And even more so that this mistake would later pass technical inspection. But I may be wrong. After all, these were the beginnings of the production of this type of devices. In the previous recording, I also told you about several other features of this vacuum cleaner, including this very funny handle, which is stylized to look like leather handles. You can even see some imitations of string stitching here. It’s exactly the same . Oh, it’s even more visible here, in the case of this vacuum cleaner that we saw. It is a handle made of some sheet metal and also imitating a leather belt, with such stitching. And we also have exactly the same case on the housing of the Omega vacuum cleaner that we saw. We also compared these two vacuum cleaners, they are very, very similar in many respects, they are very similar. Well, there is no doubt that these vacuum cleaners from Rzeszów were modeled on Omega models. I think there is no point in discussing what the vacuum cleaner looks like any longer. Let’s just look into it. This is also very interesting for me, because I haven’t looked at this vacuum cleaner yet. Here – and it works very nicely – you remove the air inlet cover, onto which the hose was attached using a rubber adapter. Quite nice inside. Cool and I think even the original dust bag. Maybe without any inscriptions, but very nicely preserved. The inside of the vacuum cleaner is also in quite good condition, there are no signs of rust. What catches my attention a little is the fact that it probably has a different engine than the one we had in this green vacuum cleaner, because the air inlet cover on this engine was also covered with a screen like that seen on the outside this vacuum cleaner. Anyway, I can show you a photo on the side of what the engine’s air intake cover, the one through which the air was sucked in, looked like. But here, to tell you the truth, I have the impression, and I will show it to you in a moment, that it is an air inlet cover like in completely standard Polish engines from the 1960s. For example, this is an SK-5a-1 engine from 1963, I think. And when I look at this engine mount, it seems to me that it is exactly something like this engine, probably from the Water Meter Factory in Wrocław. We’ll see. This would indicate that the engine in this vacuum cleaner was probably replaced, because at that time these engines were probably not manufactured in Wrocław. We’ll see this in a moment, it’s also very interesting. Maybe I’ll put this vacuum cleaner vertically to better get to the engine here. So let’s see, I need to remove three screws here… Now I should be able to remove this engine cover. Yes, here you can clearly see the replaced, slightly later engine. The mounting method is the same as in the original. Here, the engine is bolted to this bracket from the side with two bolts and nuts from the inside. So we’ll unscrew them soon. Oh, the cap fell in, but I’ll take it out soon. Okay, and now we can take the engine out. The engine sits quite firmly here, I already pushed it in from underneath. I take out the engine. The vacuum cleaner itself is one long, long pipe. See, you can take a look inside here. I’m putting this vacuum cleaner body aside for now. And now we can safely look at the engine that was in this vacuum cleaner. The engine was clearly replaced recently, as can be seen here by the insulating tape. But it’s nice that it was installed there and that this vacuum cleaner could work. Unfortunately, we will not see what original engine was probably in this vacuum cleaner. In that green one we could see the original engine type, factory-installed in Rzeszów. Here we have – I’ll show you, I’ll move to the side too – I’ll show you the nameplate. These are, I admit, my favorite engines, very solid. An engine from the Water Meter Factory in Wrocław, type SK-5, from 1961. I think that if I remember correctly, we found an identical engine in, among others, the Alfa II vacuum cleaner from 1960. This is quite a classic SK-5 engine from the early 1960s. Engine properties: this is the factory number, 220 V, 1.8 And here it should be, 250 W, 15,000 rpm, 50 Hz The engine looks quite nice, in quite nice condition. Well, unfortunately the Bakelite casing is cracked, but this has unfortunately happened. Even if it caused a problem, I think I would be able to replace the housing, because I have several engines of this type, one of which is probably even broken. The engine is clean and nice. In terms of operation, there will probably be no problem with it. We’ll see, we’ll try it out later. It is equipped with a Silesia anti-interference capacitor. All this is definitely later than this vacuum cleaner. However, let’s say that this engine, if the vacuum cleaner was made in 1953, and this engine is from 1961, it is 8 years newer than this vacuum cleaner. It’s not a huge difference. In any case, it’s nice that this vacuum cleaner does not have a very modern engine or a Zelmer engine installed in it, for example the ZZSD 300 type or the 84 type from somewhere at the turn of the 1970s or 1980s, or from the 1980s. I think this is a very common case, because let’s be honest, these old engines from the 1950s in many cases did not stand the test of time. Moreover, we saw that the engine from our previous green vacuum cleaner unfortunately did not work properly and it would certainly not be possible to work with that vacuum cleaner. However, we will see, I suppose, that with this SK-5 engine from FAWOD, i.e. from the Water Meter Factory in Wrocław, this vacuum cleaner can work quite decently. What could possibly be changed here is to route the switch and the cable through the holes that were actually intended for it. This is a very easy mistake to make, because the cables are practically identical. The only thing is that I will simply have to disconnect the wires that go to the power cord in order to be able to remove it and replace it with the switch. Maybe we should do that right away, because it will be at least a "small repair" in quotation marks. And by the way, when we have this motor disconnected, we will of course also check its operation and then we will look at the brush motor. Okay, for now, let me just peel off this tape connecting the wires here. I definitely have to disconnect this and this cable , otherwise I won’t be able to remove the entire power cable. Unless I disconnected the wires from the plug. But maybe I’ll just take off this duct tape for now and we’ll tape it up again later. Okay, the wires here are not soldered, they are just braided, that makes things easier. Nice, and to tell you the truth, I think this cable… Or maybe, wait, maybe if I unscrew the switch it will be more convenient. By the way, I wonder if this is the original switch that was actually attached to this vacuum cleaner. Here you can see that it is secured with some sort of insulating tape, but it is much older than this one. Okay, I still have to disconnect here. The question, of course, is whether this switch works. We’ll check that in a moment too. And this wire is also braided here. You could then use a regular connection block to reconnect these wires, but I don’t know if it makes sense. This will also need to be repaired, as the insulation is cracking in one place. This cable is also really cracked. I think I’ll extend it a little more though. In fact, to ensure the safe use of such a vacuum cleaner, the cable would have to be replaced altogether. But I would prefer to leave the original one, because this vacuum cleaner is supposed to be, above all, an antique. We’ll check to see if there’s a puncture somewhere in this wire, but in any case, I’m going to pull some more of the wires out of the wire, because you can see here, the insulation on it is completely cracked. Here too… Okay… For now, we have these wires extended. Now I can… I’ll be able to slide this whole cable out. Here I still have to remove the insulation that holds it in the housing. There is also a tiny rubber cable grommet. It also looks a bit as if it had been stuck in this place for decades. Okay, this grommet here is actually barely holding on. It looks like it’s been installed here for a really long time. Okay, but we’re going to put this in here… Oh, this way the wire will be on the bottom. We’ll bring this wire in here again. Okay, it goes in without a problem… Yes, even a little more wire. I’ll prepare it right away, maybe I’ll cut the wire further… Yes, I’ll take out a few more wires… Fortunately, we have a lot of this wire, there’s no need to save it. This isolation is very difficult. Damn, this thing is pretty cracked up in the middle. Well, okay… I would say… These wires are very cracked. I won’t take this further. I would say that this cable can be left for museum purposes only. This means that it is probably too big a risk to run the device with this cable, in which the internal insulation is completely broken. I’ll secure it outside here, but we won’t be able to do much with it. We will check the operation of this motor after connecting it with a different cable. However, this cable will only be used for museum purposes. We will soon check whether there is no short circuit at this front – as I said. But it’s too cracked to use safely. This cable is absolutely not suitable for any public presentations . However, it would be a pity to replace it, because such an original cable always looks nice on the vacuum cleaner. I admit that the cable on the second vacuum cleaner was in much, much better condition. Here, the insulation comes off almost immediately. In some safe workshop conditions, at reduced voltage, you can play with this cable. But overall it is no longer suitable. I admit that this is probably the first cable that is so damaged and cracked that I see. Usually, somewhere, say, from the pre-war years, I sometimes found cables that were so damaged and falling apart. Okay… I’d like to use white insulating tape here, because I simply don’t have any black tape. Of course, it always wears out the fastest. Here I will protect this cable against further delamination. Now that we have this cable on the table, let’s do a little test. First, I will braid these wires of the cable together in a provisional way. And now, if I touch here – I have the meter set to check the current flow… If I touch the plug, I should – exactly – I should have a current flow between them… Okay, now if I untangle the wires… then of course I shouldn’t now have current transitions. Unless the two wires touch each other somewhere in broken insulation, but they don’t. And when I put them together, I have a connection. I will disconnect it, I have no connection… So in this respect, we can say that – in quotation marks – this cable is "functional", it is currently suitable for use, but this is due to the cracked insulation in these internal cables, this is just risky and dangerous. I put it all aside. Okay, now let’s look at this engine. Maybe I won’t develop this switch. I’m even going to strengthen it, its insulation, a little bit more. But I’m not putting the meter away yet because I would like to see if this switch works at all. I’m setting it to current flow again… Oh, maybe that’s how it will be visible. Yes, I will touch here and here. Oh, I have a current crossing. I’ll turn it off now… I don’t have a connection… I don’t have one, but I’ll turn it on… Wait… Well, I have… I have a power flow. I turn it off… I don’t have it… This switch seems to be working. Evidently… Okay, let’s expand on this, because this is also a rather risky construction. This insulating tape is also falling apart a bit. Yes… The insulating tape no longer holds the switch at all. We’ll just give you a completely new one soon. Okay, I’ve uncovered the switch. It’s on the switch here… I can’t see it, unfortunately… 2 A, 250 V I’m not sure if there’s any manufacturer’s logo here, I think there is. Maybe I will be able to photograph this switch and show you a photo of it from the side, and maybe in this photo I will be able to better recognize which switch it is. Here, by the way, it will be easier for us to check its operation once again. I set my sights on examining the passage of current again. Oh, you can see it here. Here I will touch on the other side. It’s… It’s gone… Once again… Oh, now it slipped my mind… It’s… It’s gone… Okay, the switch works. It is necessary to secure it again. Here I even have a bit of an impression that… No, this cable won’t fall off, okay. But no, it’s better to fix it and solder it again. Oh, I think that’s enough. This cable is now attached a little more solidly, because some of the wires in the cable simply broke off and did not stick to the soldering. Okay, that’s enough. I’ll put on a piece of this heat shrink. I think it’s pretty well secured. Okay… Ok, now I’ll take some more insulating tape. Okay, I think this switch is already really well secured here. These contacts are close to each other, but they are separated from each other by the Bakelite part. So nothing should happen here anymore. Let’s take a closer look at this engine, does it require cleaning at all? I guess not, it’s really clean. It looks very nice, except that the Bakelite turbine cover is damaged. I’ll take a quick look at the brushes in the engine. Very nice large brush. It’s not worn out. Let’s also see from the other side, just in case. Here too, you can’t fault these brushes at all. Out of curiosity, I always check the size of the brushes, although it is described in the catalog, which we will look at in a moment. Zeroed… In the narrower place: 6.50 mm In the narrower place 6.50 mm, in the wider place: 8 mm – 6.50 X 8 mm I put the brush back into the motor. The capacitor is attached to this clamp with tape, I will not detach it. By the way, I completely forgot to mention this. When we looked at the engine of this green vacuum cleaner, one of the first from the Rzeszów factory, the original engine installed somewhere in the first half or around the mid-1950s, I don’t know if you noticed that there was no anti-interference capacitor installed there at all. And just like when we took the motor out of this German Omega vacuum cleaner, which is very similar to the vacuum cleaners we see today – there was no anti-interference capacitor there either. I admit that I am curious about the year from which these capacitors began to be used. I think it’s been around the end of the 1950s, because vacuum cleaners from, let’s say, 1957 or 1958 certainly had these capacitors. They were probably also required by the standards of that time. Now I have a suggestion that we check the current flow on these wires and possibly try to connect the engine to the power supply. I set my meter to check the current flow. Here I will touch to this wire and to this wire. Nothing is happening at the moment. And when I turn the switch… Well, we have a current flow. Okay… Just in case, I touch the engine casing to see if there is any current passage here somewhere? But there isn’t. Once again: we have a current crossing… We don’t have it. Okay… The switch seems to be working, there is current passing through the brushes and there is current passing through the capacitor. Theoretically, this engine should be functional. I will show you other engines of this type that I have in my collection, although we have recently seen some of them. We certainly saw this functional SK-5a-1 engine from 1961 not so long ago, i.e. a slightly newer version of the SK-5 engine. We also watched in a separate recording – and I think I will post a link to it at the end of this recording – this engine, also from the Water Meter Factory in Wrocław, type SK-5a-1 from 1964, which is another three years newer than this engine. This one – 1961, 1963, yes, 1964. These are SK-5a-1 engines. And I should have an SK-5a engine somewhere, sorry… Oh, it was even standing behind me. Okay, so this is the closest engine to the one we took out of the vacuum cleaner today. SK-5a engine from 1962. This one is from 1961. We found such an SK-5 engine – I think I’ve already mentioned it – during the review of, for example, the Alfa II vacuum cleaner from 1960, yes. So this is the whole family of engines like SK-5, SK-5a, SK-5a-1 Okay, I can put these engines back. This one works, this one works. Unfortunately, this one has a faulty rotor, one of the rotor windings is burnt. We can quickly look into old catalogs to see if we can find such an engine. I don’t remember here, it’s a catalog from 1969, but I don’t think so, because there were newer types of engines back then. KASO 87/30, SK-10, SK-5b And SK-5a and its relatives are no longer here. This is the catalog, we have also looked at it several times, from 1963. So it’s actually not much newer than this engine from 1961. There is probably only one motor for vacuum cleaners and it is the SK-5a motor, which is a slightly newer version. An engine exactly like the one from 1962. We also watched it in another video and read the properties of this engine here. So I won’t do it just yet. Yes, we also have information about brushes here: brushes measuring 6.5 by 8 by 16 mm. Here we checked 6.5 by 8 mm, everything is correct. Generally, I think that this SK-5a engine is very, very similar to the SK-5. The same turbine cover. I have the impression that the SK-5 has a slightly higher stator, in general it is a bit higher. Yes, it’s a little taller, it has this stator package – I feel like it’s a little taller or longer, depending on how you look at it. If in a horizontal position, it is longer. However, everything else is the same. This is probably where the rotor in this engine is slightly longer. At least that’s what it seems to me, but the whole stator package is clearly, noticeably longer. This engine is more "flattened". Okay, I’m putting the catalogs away. Now let’s do what I like the most, which is to test the operation of such an engine. I will connect it here to a temporary connection cable, which is incomparably better condition than this cable. This is where the second wire from the switch will go. Okay, just make sure that the contacts on the switch do not touch, for example, this buckle. First, I’ll take my 24 V protection transformer. It’s still useful for various tests. TB-100a transformer from the Fanina factory in Przemyśl. There is a separate video on this channel dedicated to this transformer. And I will connect our cable to this transformer. I will connect the transformer to a voltage regulator, because I would like to reduce the voltage a little. The transformer was designed for 220 V. I wear glasses just in case. I connect the voltage regulator to the power supply. Now it’s more or less reduced a bit… Oh, maybe you can see it here. I have a slightly reduced voltage, so the primary voltage should be about 220 V, so the secondary voltage here – as this transformer was designed for, should be about 24 V. And let’s see if the engine starts at all… I don’t know if it is now on or off. Oh, now it’s slowly starting to turn. I will increase the voltage… Now the motor is running… Here you can see quite nicely how the rotor is turning. Quiet, works very nicely. More or less now, I think it’s around 24 – 25, maybe 26 volts, because I increased the voltage a bit. We can check. I set it to a range of up to 200V AC. How much does it show? 25.2 V 25.9 – 24.9 V, about 25 V Now it would be a little less, I guess… Yes 24.9 – 25 V In any case, the engine works very nicely. I reduce the voltage, turn it off… Well, at this voltage the engine runs very nicely. I will leave the protective transformer aside for now. And we can possibly try to connect this motor to a slightly higher voltage, just a little higher. That is, connect the motor directly to the voltage regulator and lower the voltage more or less – let’s say – to about 50 V. Certainly not more, because as I always say: these types of motors from vacuum cleaners placed on a countertop without any mounting cannot be run at a higher voltage . I’ll just put on some gloves, since higher voltages will be involved here. Remember that we are not touching the engine here. I should actually place the engine on a stand so that it can suck in air. Sorry… I’ll get something in a moment… Oh, okay. I’ll make him a stand like this. Here I have a voltage regulator. I’m putting my glasses back on. This turbine can always throw out broken pieces of Bakelite. You can get hit in the eye with this. I have to lower my tension a lot here. Here I have a cable from our motor that I connect to the voltage regulator, not here to the power strip. I connect my regulator to the power strip. And now I’m going to turn on the voltage… Okay, the engine is running pretty nice. You can hear the bearings a bit, but overall they work very well. First of all, it responds smoothly to the adjustments made to the regulator. If there are any burnt, damaged or broken windings in the rotor, most often the motor does not respond to these voltage changes, or at least it does not respond as smoothly, it has some jumps, it does not achieve greater power if we increase the voltage. However, here everything seemed to work quite nicely. And I think we can put this motor back in the vacuum cleaner. I can disconnect the engine now. The wire is disconnected, I can safely disconnect the wires going to the engine here . One, two… And I think there is no point in dwelling on the engine any longer. We’ll just put it back in the vacuum cleaner right now. So this is how I will put the vacuum cleaner here. Now I’m going to put the motor inside here so that… Okay, the switch will be here. The switch will be at the top here, so you can easily reach the wires. I’ll hook up the engine here for now. I have to take a screw… I would need a washer here – to be honest – it would be useful, because there are no washers for these screws. I’ll find some soon. Here I have two tiny pads. I think they’re Okay… I think they’ll be good… Yeah… Here’s where I put this rubber washer. Now I put a screw on this here. And on the other side I put the nut on. Exactly the same here. The way of mounting the engine is exactly the same as in the green vacuum cleaner we looked at earlier. Here’s also a washer, a screw… Here’s a rubber washer, a screw… A washer, I don’t know, maybe it will be a little better visible. I put the screw here through the hole in this buckle and through the washer on the other side. It’s already in here. And here’s the nut on the other side. I don’t think I forgot anything. We’ll just put the rubber band on from the front, but I’ll just tighten it a bit here. For now, I will hold the nut with my fingers, and later maybe with pliers. Although the nut here, once it fits into the rubber washer, it practically holds itself together. You don’t even need to hold it with pliers. Okay… Maybe so, I’ll install the rubber here now, but I’ll wipe it off a bit first. I wiped the rubber and also greased it a little – just like in that vacuum cleaner – just a little, so that it slides in better. Now I just press this rubber so that it evenly adheres to the engine turbine housing and holds the engine nicely in the vacuum cleaner body. It seems to me that all sides are there, look… It seems to have entered nicely there, yes, it holds the engine. Oh, I’m thinking, gosh, let’s replace this cable. God forbid, someone will plug in this vacuum cleaner somewhere during the exhibition or during the exhibition preparations and some misfortune will occur. Let’s replace this wire. This one, of course, will remain, as I told you, as an exhibit. I was still wondering what to do with it. But for safety’s sake it is better to replace it. So this is how I remove this cable. We’re going to pull the plug right here. I just wish that the cable I’m replacing… This one is also nice, thick and rubbery. Generally very similar to the old ones. They annoy me a bit, this cable has white prints on it, but maybe it will wear off over time or I’ll remove them somehow. All right. I just wish this cable was more or less the same length. Let’s see… Here’s the plugin. Well, let’s say I have to cut the wire somewhere here. It will be exactly the same as the factory cable. I can save the rest and use it for other devices. In this case, we also need to remove the plug from this old cable. I’m unscrewing these two contacts here. Just the ends of the wires wrapped around here. Even here, the wires were not tinned in any way. Look, it’s all breaking on this side too… Okay, I’m afraid to connect this cable at all. Very briefly… I’ll just look at how many contacts I need here. I’m taking my new cable, I’m going to straighten it out here again. I’ll cut the outer insulation. This very short wire should be here. Okay, I have a brand new two wires inside here. I can compare with this original cable how much insulation I have to remove. That’s more or less. Wait a minute… One, two… Okay , but I’ll take a soldering iron and tin the ends of these wires a little to prevent them from unraveling. Cool… That’s enough… Now I’ll screw them in here. Let’s say this one will be here… This is how I’ll bend it… Now I can tighten it. Okay, here’s the other one… I already have both of these plug contacts screwed here. I can arrange them nicely in the plugin here. I’ll close the plugin. Here I need a nut. Okay… I think the screw is caught… It’s quite tight. I’ll just check if I missed anything during installation. Here, both plug contacts come out nicely. No, okay… There is no transition between these ends. All right. And now here’s this: on the other hand, we’re going to need a little more of these wires. How much was there in this original cable? Oh, I still have to remove this rubber insulation somewhere. Just a little bit more. I don’t know, is that enough? One more centimeter. I’ll just secure it with tape so it doesn’t come apart here. Here I will also remove a little bit, let’s say a centimeter of insulation. Okay, a little more… Okay… I’m not going to tin these wires here, because we’ll just twist them together. In fact, we can even connect them quite properly, maybe even solder them. And now let’s say – let’s connect this cable… But I don’t have to do this first, sorry, because I won’t be able to connect this cable later. So this is how I have to put it through the hole at the bottom. Oh cool, this one just comes in here. It’s about as thick as the original cable that was here. Here I will put heat shrink on these wires first. And I’ll connect it… We’ll solder it soon. Okay, I’m putting heat shrink on this wire connection here . Let the heat shrink come in here. Here’s the second heat shrink… Okay. We have the wires connected. Literally, just in case, I will additionally secure this connection point with tape. Different people use this, so keep it safely connected and secured here. Same here. Okay, maybe it’s not very pretty, but it’s definitely effective. Here, too, I will secure the end of this wire with insulating tape so that it does not come apart. And I would like to put some insulating tape somewhere else, maybe here, so that the cable doesn’t slide out through this grommet in the housing. It should be enought. Okay, okay, the wire won’t go through here anymore. This is enough of this cable. Now we need to install the switch here. I prepared a washer and cut it out of a piece of rubber, because the one that was there fell apart. However, the pad will still provide some protection. Okay, it fits… Now we put the switch here. Oh man, interesting… Now I’m starting to understand why it was done this way. Because this is an obviously non-original switch and it simply does not fit into this hole. Therefore, the cable was led out through this hole, and the switch was mounted in the larger hole through which the cable originally passed. But I would prefer to do it this way, i.e. I will simply enlarge this hole here a little bit. If we find the original switch later, we will still put a washer here that will cover the larger hole. I wonder if it was factory-made like that, or if someone replaced this switch before… I think that when replacing this switch, someone replaced it with one with a wider diameter. This switch simply did not fit into this hole, but it fit exactly into the one for the cable. Well, I’d rather take him out this way. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have the switches that should be installed here at the moment. So literally it’s a matter of a millimeter of widening this hole. I’ll try to do it soon. Okay, I have this file here. Okay, the switch goes through without any problem. Cool, literally minimal. It was, as I say, only a matter of a millimeter. By the way, I’m looking… Yes, it’s just a tube soldered from the inside, here at the air outlet. Before I put the switch in, I will sand the cover a little with fine steel wool. A little bit, not too much. I actually didn’t want to do it before, because because I was afraid that this vacuum cleaner would look a bit artificial and polished. But this rust is worth cleaning. Well, now we can finally install this switch. I just haven’t mentioned these connections yet, which in this case are very simple. Let’s check it out: here we have the power cord, the connection cord. One wire from it goes here to the capacitor and to the motor. The second wire goes to the switch, exits the switch and then enters the capacitor. By the way, as I see, capacitors usually have one more wire that goes to the engine ground. This wire is cut off here, but if it works, it works. Okay, let’s leave it like that. This is where I put the switch. It would be nice to have a knob or a lever for the switch to make turning on the vacuum cleaner more convenient. And over time, I think I will have to replace this switch anyway. I screw on the switch nut. Okay, these wires are holding together like this, good, nothing should happen here. And I think we can now slowly close this engine cover. And now see: the cable comes out at the bottom, and the switch comes out here at the top. I have already placed the vacuum cleaner vertically here. I check if all the screws line up. I think so. Well, I’m going for it. There will be one screw here, there will be another screw here. Okay, the screws are tightened. We’re going to put the dust bag cover on here in a minute. I’ll just clean it up a bit. I’ll wipe it all off a little before installing this front air intake cover. We will still clean the outside of this vacuum cleaner right away. Okay, the dust bag is pretty nice, I can put it in here. I would like to polish it a little more. We’ll see if it does any good. I already have this air intake cover quite nicely polished here. I think it turned out quite well. We can now put the cover on here. Sorry… And let’s close – wait – let’s close these clasps. It holds up very nicely. The vacuum cleaner is actually assembled this way. We’ll take a look at it in a moment. I would like to give it a very general wipe down. I would like to spend a moment to wipe this vacuum cleaner from dust and dirt, because it could get quite dusty here. It’s not bad… The vacuum cleaner is nicely cleaned. Let’s try to test it after assembly. Now I’m not really afraid of this new cable. Just for a moment, just in case, I’d like to check the connections here again. I touch the plug. I don’t have a connection. I turn it on, I have electricity flowing through. I don’t have. I have a connection, I don’t have it… Let’s check if there is no power transfer somewhere to the vacuum cleaner. Here I touch, well, no, I don’t see. Okay, we can connect the vacuum cleaner, but to a voltage regulator. Here I have a power strip without a grounding pin, and I plug in the vacuum cleaner. This power strip, maybe I’ll put it here, I’ll connect this strip to the voltage regulator. Voltage regulator, I reduce the voltage properly and connect it to the power strip. And I turn on the power… Well, the switch seems to work fine. The suction power of this vacuum cleaner is also quite decent. It may not be a very efficient device with this old engine from 1961, but it would certainly be possible to use this vacuum cleaner for some simple household chores. Especially since I did not increase the voltage to approximately 220 V, the vacuum cleaner was still operating at a much reduced voltage. So I think this entire review of the vacuum cleaner was very successful. Finally, as always, thank you very much for this review of another old device. Today we dealt with this vacuum cleaner from the Rzeszów Household Equipment Factory, probably one of the first devices of this type produced in Poland after the war, around the mid-1950s. As I said, this vacuum cleaner was created somewhere between 1953 and at the latest 1957, or rather somewhere around 1955, maybe 1956. In the previous episode, we looked quite closely at this vacuum cleaner also from the Rzeszów Household Equipment Factory, which is so cool that it is still equipped with the original factory installed engine, although it was not possible to fully identify whether it is an engine imported from the GDR or whether it is an engine produced – as it was written in the Zelmer plant chronicle – at the WSK Warszawa-Grochów plant. Unfortunately , there were no markings on this engine , and I don’t have enough experience with these old engines to actually know who the manufacturer of this engine is. So this issue remains to be clarified. I was kind of hoping that this vacuum cleaner would help with that. Well, in it we found a later replaced engine from the Water Meter Factory in Wrocław, an SK-5 engine from 1961, a type of engine that we had already seen, among others, in vacuum cleaners from the early 1960s. Unfortunately, what engine was in this vacuum cleaner remained and will remain unexplained. Well, you also have to approach it with understanding. Well, you have to remember that for many decades, for almost 70 years, these vacuum cleaners were simply utility devices, household appliances. And when something broke in them, the engines were replaced with ones that would make the device work. Today, they are technical monuments for those who are interested in them. Well, it’s hard to find such devices with original equipment nowadays. But it’s actually nice, because this vacuum cleaner still has a vintage engine, whether or not it has been replaced. What we did to this vacuum cleaner today, apart from general cleaning and a bit of sanding of the nickel-plated air inlet and outlet covers, was mainly : replacing the power cord or connection cable. This cable appeared to be in pretty good condition from the outside. Well, as we saw inside, these two cores, these two internal wires, the insulation on them was crumbling and, however, using a vacuum cleaner with this wire was associated with a high risk. I will not throw away this cable, I will leave it with this vacuum cleaner as part of its history. I will be able to show what old, damaged cables look like during some presentations. However, now, after replacing it with a very similar, nice, thick, rubber-insulated cable, this vacuum cleaner is at least relatively safe, because no old 70-year-old device is perhaps 100% safe. Well, it is relatively safe to use and at least this cable should not cause any failure. Oh, and we made one more small change here, because at the beginning – as you saw – the cover was turned to the side. This connection cable came out where the switch is located . However, in the place where the cable is, there was a switch mounted and it was not possible to install it as it should have been done at the factory. So the switch is now where it should be. However, there is also something missing here, so I will probably try to replace this switch in the future. And finally we saw that this vacuum cleaner works. So all in all, I’m very pleased with it and I’m glad it joined the collection. I am glad that this vacuum cleaner has a chance to go to the exhibition in a few days, together with this vacuum cleaner, to the exhibition of old vacuum cleaners at the Museum of Modernity in Olsztyn. I will be looking forward to it and we will definitely come back to these vacuum cleaners. First of all, we will try to explain what engines were originally installed in them in the 1950s. If you are able to help with this, I will of course be very happy about all your comments. Thank you very much for today. I’m going to review another old vacuum cleaner. I will try to show it to you as soon as possible. I say hello and see you next time!