Here I am!
Where's Gordon, lol....
Hi Martin!
First, the washer may have the 96388 skinny belt. That would account for the quietness and the lack of woo-woo. It's amazing what a belt will change in these machines. If it has that belt, I'd love to know because I wasn't aware it was used on standard capacity WPs, especially far enough down the line to have a manual filter.
On the dryer, I'm going to say that is a 1971 - 1973 model. To my knowledge there was not a matching washer, but that could be wrong.
There was a time in the early 70s when Sears seemingly re-introduced consoles and knobs that were used a decade earlier, but only on select near BOL models. I don't know why they did this, as they never seemed to repeat that ever again. I remember these models on the floor very well. I tried to get my mom to consider one when she bought her 1972 MOL dryer, because I thought it would have been cool to get the same type knob on the new dryer as was on the old one. She wanted an automatic termination dryer though, and that was probably a smart move.
The control knob is solid metal and was widely used in the early 60s. It is so heavy and over-built that it could crack a car windshield if thrown at one. That console is a clone of those used on 1962 600-series machines. These have the exact number of little squares on the left as the 62 600 did, the edge trim is chromed in the same manner, and the whole thing is made of pot metal just like the originals were 10 years earlier, only the "Heavy Duty" wording was added to some but not all.
There was a basic 29-inch 1972 washer which had this panel too which I am lucky to have, but in different colors and the knob was the 1971 big white plastic design. This is the third dryer model I am aware of that used this "retro" styling in one panel or other. Again, I have no idea why Sears did this, unless they had some huge stock of old panel blanks to use up. There was also at least four 24-inch washer models produced with this panel style, all 1972 models.
VERY VERY neat machines though. If the dryer doesn't show a lot of wear inside, it's probably low mileage. That is a VERY interesting lint filter though. Maybe John or Kenny have seen this before - I have not. Our dryer had a lense for a drum light, but no socket also. I think all the rear bulkheads back then had the hole so they all got the lense whether it was used for a light or not.
Gordon
