1974 Lady K found and brought home!!

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30 to 22 Minute Soak

My guess would be that they needed the extra timer increments to extend the neutral drain from 2 to 4 minutes for the larger capacity machines.

Just a Guess...
MRB
 
mrb627 -

That's a great guess, but when they did that, the spin cycles were shortened. There had been a 4-minute spin in between wash and rinse, and a 6-minute final spin. When the drain times were extended by two minutes the spins were shortened correspondingly. This was done across the board, even on timers that weren't used in large capacity models, on models without pre-wash or pre-soak, and on timers that had huge amounts of excess dead-space.

I always figured that the shortening of the spins was to lessen bearing wear (which was a problem on standard and tall-centerpost belt drives), and that the extended drains were the simplest way to leave the final cycle layout and duration unchanged. Seeing as some large capacity machines could have used a longer drain, it was a 'no-brainer'.

Gordon
 
Our 1976 Model 70 large cap. kenmore we had, the final spin on normal was 6 minutes and knit/delicate & perm press the final spin was 4 minutes. I hate to say it, but the LKs I played with from 1970 to 1973 had just a 2 minute spin on normal between wash & rinse. Everything pretty much evens out when you note the 8 minute shortened soak, Perm Press was now 8 minutes instead of 12, and there was only one cool down fill instead of two. That pretty much accounts for the changes for the added. Knits remained 10 minute wash though.
 
Even when Whirlpool FINALLY decided to put an extended soak cycle on their washers, it too was only 22 minutes. BTW, even my 1986 DD LK Shredmore only had a 22 minute presoak and 4 minutes of that was for the prewash agitation.
 
~30 to 22 Minute Soak.

Theoretically this is a goood idea.

Detergents can only hold soil in suspension (in the water) for a maximum of about 30 minutes. soaking longer than that without a pre-wash and water-change first is counter-productive; dirt from underarms and inseam areas gets distributed to other parts of the article of of clothing.
 

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