Fifteen years strung along

New ones coming Saturday as wife picked out replacements Sunday.  Were Mediocre reviewed even when new Whirlpool Duet series, New are a relatively good reviewed GE Series.  Also ordered Feet supports to reduce the noise transmission from these as are recommended by others that bought them.  The less worthy reviewed machines are LG, Whirlpool and even Samsung.  Maytag still stands as higher rated but GE is right there with them.  Will see how well these last!!!

Speed Queen... nothing else comes close.

Wife and I have gone through several sets of laundry machines, and each time, the advertised 'efficiency' stepped up, the reliability, and quality, and expedience of cleaning went down.  The final set had a fancy electronic drive system (like the Variable Frequency Drives on my machine tools, but purpose-built and proprietary to this machine) and the drive electronics failed 5 times.  The last time, we replaced the washing machine with a Speed Queen, and after we had that for three weeks, she wanted to replace the dryer with a Speed Queen...

So I did.  ;-)

And I don't regret it one bit.   Old-school tough-as-nails, fast, strong, and quiet.

Another vote for Speed Queen. My wife is a laundry Nazi. She annillated three washers in ten years. I said enough after the third one. $893.00 later we were the proud owners of a New Speed Queen. Five years no issues. My son bought a new one a year or so ago. They tip out about a $1000.00 now. Last one you'll ever buy.

Still have and use my 1959 Speed Queen wringer washer and dual rinse tanks from my grandma. I use it for my shop rags and heavy winter coveralls as it really doesn't tear up the items and will run as long as you want it to.

One of the rubber pinch rollers on the wringer started to split and amazingly, they are still available, and not to expensive. Had the agitator rebuilt too as I though it was getting noisy, but turned out to be a worn keyway in the drive sheave from all the years and easy replaced.

Wife won't even think of cutting me some slack on my greasy items going through her washer. Probably because I have this washer, but it does a better job anyways for me.

Tuesday was wash day growing up, and I remember well all the clothes and bedding getting washed, rinsed, then hung on the line either in the back yard, or basement to dry. I was told grandpa purchased a new automatic set, (washer and dryer) in 1962, or 1963 and she didn't like them so gave the set to my aunt and kept these. I've had them since 1998 when she passed and there has been literally thousands of shop towels ran through this machine. I typically turn the heat up on the water heater and when ready, fill the washer straight from the heater drain valve with short rubber garden hose as the machine will take boiling water if wanted. Hot water cleans so much better on greasy items along with proper soap.

I do get to use the dryer afterward.  

shameless dude wrote: every female i've talked to....loves them vibrating ones!!!  uh....don't ask!

Hey good buddy!!!!  You're ole smart azz is back here,,,,,,,,,,,an I'm askin!!!

If you read up on washers and dryers, The High Efficiency rating is heavily weighted towards certain things.  For washing machines, the volume of water used, is the highest weight...  second is indicated line current draw.

So... if they shut the water off totally, and run the machine through it's cycle totally dry, it will get a very high rating.  Second, they don't change the weighting for cold, vs warm, vs hot water- they calculate the 'efficiency' as if you're using nothing but hot water, and they include the 'energy use' of the water heater (by an arbitrary adding) to the 'Efficiency' of the washing machine.

Next, is the peak line current draw... if they use a servomotor with electronic (variable speed) drive, the apparent peak line current indicates significantly lower than a capacitor-start DC motor.

The part that they sacrifice, to get this HE rating, is twofold - first, cleaning performance... second, your clothes get beat to death due to lack of water.

Silly thing is, the HE unit may use what... 20% less ENERGY if you want them clean, you have to run them through three to four cycles before they're comparatively clean AND... throw your clothes out after substantially fewer wearings.

So the HE ratings are, from a real life perspective, entirely Bullcrap.  They will categorically exclude actual performance in their ratings, because they can proclaim 'clothes washing performance' to be entirely arbitrary.

It is the exact same policy garbage we pay through the nose for with emmissions and motor fuel... it totally ignores the real world result.

Danged plastic clutch went bad in the Whirlpool washer yesterday. I noticed the upper agitator not working but the lower one working as normal. There is a sprag clutch affair in these that use fingers that fly out and grab the interior of the upper agitator pulling it around in an "on and off" scenario. Clothes still wash, just the agitation is not as aggressive. After breaking into it, I have two fingers snapped off and the other two are missing their teeth. Washer was new in 2000 so has served very well.

Online search with the washer model number produced the clutch assembly for about $39.00 and further searches yielded a part number for an OEM clutch assembly. Looking on Amazon, I punch in the part number and the OEM clutch comes up at $8.95 with free shipping!!! Ain't no markup there for sure with the appliance parts suppliers.

Just bought new front load Maytag's. Probably not gunna be as good as Maytag of old, but still pretty good reviews.

Good to know. I will definitely look at this brand next time I need to replace.