The knuckle joint on the Dirt Devil stick vacuum failed, so it followed us home instead of leaping into the trash:
Although the fitting seems to be made of ABS, it’s now missing major chunks of plastic in the high-stress areas, so rebuilding it seems not worth the effort.
Because we don’t have any carpets and this one will never leave the basement, I extracted the carpet beater brush and its motor, only to find Yet Another Example of poor assembly practices:
It’s a 12 V (-ish, I didn’t measure whatever comes out of the vacuum head) DC motor and those errant strands aren’t quite long enough to meet in the middle. The yellow rectangle is a thermal fuse that would be shorted out if the strands were a bit longer.
The broken joint lets the head swivel from side to side, but the elevation joint is still good. If I don’t expect too much, the thing might still suffice for extracting dust from under the benches:
Worst case, I can swap in a classic floor brush using one of the adapters I made a while ago:
That was easy, if only because I skipped the hard part …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
I tried salvaging motors from a broken Bissell, but they are built with open terminals. Not good for 110V motors outside the OEM environment. Making a safe housing would negate the hoped-for purpose of a small highspeed motor. Sigh.
The tools could be used on the new Bissell (amazing they made them compatible), but beyond that, the power cord and the screws were the only salvageable bits. Had a few unkind thoughts on the design of the broken bit, too. Zero chance of a successful repair.
The motor goes into the Box o’ Motors, exactly none of which have yet come in handy.
I’m still stepping around the carcass of the Kenmore vacuum, with the intent of transplanting its cord into the Electrolux, replacing the OEM cord that’s stiffened up a bit over nigh onto seven decades. I’m willing to give that one the benefit of the doubt.