Look at the flapillator in the early machines compared to the later ones... The earlier ones, the flap was much more straight, with 3 'mild' waves in it... I think this allowed more 'push' to the water and gave much better turnover...
These later machines, the flap is 'severely' waved, so that 3 large parts of the flap point down, and the 3 smaller parts nub straight... I think the engineers thought that this would direct a stronger push out of the 3 straight nubs...
They were wrong... When I did a few loads in the machine at Mark's in Wytheville, I found that the load sunk to the bottom and got kneaded into a fabric donut... Seeing all the "free" water circulating around, you think, "Wow, this machine is huge!" when in reality, the more clothing you added, the thicker the donut got at the bottom... Once it got to the rinse, I saw this clearly through the water...
I look forward to your review! What options do you have on the control panel? And how does the printed text of how many cycles it has compare to reality?