Behold! The Simplistic Beauty Of A Maytag Transmission

[launderess]

For those whom have never seen one in its native habitat.

*LOL*

http://www.ebay.com/itm/USED-MAYTAG...533230?hash=item25b744dbee:g:3poAAOSw1S9WgWTL

 

[vacerator]

Lundress,

Now if I still had a machine to put it in. If you ask me, Whirlpoo should have kept that gear case in production.
I bet they own the tooling, and yes, I left the L off on purpose.

 

[askolover]

people in my neck of the woods pronounce it "whirpoo"!  No Kidding!

 

[combo52]

Maytag Orbital Transmission

The Ebay sale picture also contains the damper dome and the brake assembly.

 

While this transmission was fairly simple overall it and the washer it was in was seriously outdated in many ways. In spite of the simple look from the outside it was a PIA to replace, expensive to build and not all that reliable. [ I just replaced one for a little old lady who managed to strip the plastic pinion gear out ]

 

One of its biggest problems was the suspension design was so poor that the washer always had to have an out-of-balance-switch making it far less than an automatic washer, Most consumers hatted the fact that many laundry loads required two trips back down the basement stairs to re-balance a load to get it done.

 

As everyone here knows Maytag was the one that was trying to kill off this design. This is why MT really was pushing the Norge and Amana-Speed Queen style washers. The ONLY reason that MT kept producing the DC machines was for commercial use and for the old Mom&Pop dealers that told MT if they got rid of this design they would not sell any MT appliances any longer as most of what MT was selling in the late 90s-2006 was having far too many service problems.

 

[arbilab]

Ahh, the jiffypop transmission. Occupied the same space and performed the same function as the one before but fell apart twice as fast. What an achievement.

 

[vacerator]

Rick B.,

Our lasted 20 years with four of us washing every day. Our daughter has it now, after 25 years. Still going strong.

 

[askolover]

Mother's is 22 now, only one repair...the timer went out.  And she washes every day.

 

[arbilab]

Thanks for the datapoints. I take it back then, pending further evidence. One cannot tell definitively which anecdotes represent the bellcurve center of a design.

Of all the washers I've owned or rented/used, very few developed problems and none were serious/expensive or difficult to fix like transes. Outside that handful of cases I just try to remember what I've been told.

 

[launderess]

Am confused

For yonks have heard nothing but praise for Maytag "Dependable Care" and that helical drive. Now y'all are saying it was rubbish?

 

[norgeway]

My experience with Maytag

Our old Frigidaire died in 1984 and since my Aunt had a Maytag, we got one, After using a 60s Frigidaire my Grandmother and Mother hated the Maytag, like John said, it STAYED out of balance, I remember my Grandmother who never said a bad word in her life ,standing at that miserable thing re distributing the load 4 or 5 times during a cycle and saying how much She hated the blasted thing,,,which was about the same as a sailor cussing..LOL, it wouldn't wash nearly as big a load as the Frigidaire would which had a much smaller tub, After about 2 years, Mother told me to go get a washer that would WASH, I went to Crowells and got a Filter Flo GE which was wonderful, fast forward a few years, I got a 806 and tried it for about a month, same thing, out of balance all the time, I now use a belt drive Kenmore and wouldn't trade it for 10 new in the box Maytags, I don't have time to stand and baby sit a washer.

 

[brucelucenta]

Very odd indeed. I have NEVER had that problem with the Maytag washers I have had. Unless you were washing something like a huge throw rug or something that would go out of balance easily, I can't imagine ever having a problem with one of them. Make me wonder what it was that was being washed in it that would make it go off balance like that. You know they weren't designed to wash everything. Comparing the Maytag to a solid tub Frigidaire and saying it held less is absurd, since either the standard capacity or large capacity easily held more clothing. I have used both and can attest to that myself. I liked my Frigidaire washer with the solid tub as well as the 1-18 machines I have had. They were more trouble prone than the Maytag by far. As for the transmission, I have had, used and seen many of the older transmissions last for 20-30 years and the newer ones too. Far as I am concerned they were the most dependable machines ever made. Certainly better than anything you can get now, including speed queen. The speed queen of today pales in comparison. So does anything else made today.

 

[vacerator]

Laundress,

In 1963, the Maytag gear case was not the later "six moving parts" orbital one being criticized.

 

[gansky1]

We had a GE Filter Flo growing up that was out of balance quite often, usually with smaller loads and mixed cotton/poly loads (it was the 70's).  That poor thing banged and scraped it's way through the beginning of many, many spin cycles and even with a moderately unbalanced load sounded like a sound effect from a roiling thunderstorm in a B movie.  

 

When the washer finally knocked a hole in it's own outer tub and it began to weep water in 1981, we went looking for a new machine.  My grandmother was along on the shopping trip and after seeing the Hotpoints, GE's, Whirlpools and WCI plastic products said "you'd be a fool to buy anything but a Maytag."  So that's what we got - BOL, A110.   The out of balance stop was a very welcome change to the cacophony of the GE's spin, but it happened less often with the Maytag.   We had it for five years then sold it to a neighbor friend of the family during a move.  She washed for five and finally replaced it when it was nearly 18 years old.  

 

I've had Maytags for years and never have had complaints about balancing and re-distribute trips back to the machine.  I have a couple of the very thick cotton 2x3 bath mats from Costco that almost every other machine struggles with.  The SQ front-loader gets particularly testy with those, even had the poor thing try to dance the Time Warp once with a 'jump to the left' once.  If it put them in a large-tub Maytag, they come out perfect every time.  Never out of balance and never stops.  

 

[askolover]

2nd that

Our GE FF's developed quite a rhythm when they would start that banga banga banga out of balance beat...ours didn't have a shut off on it so it would keep going until someone stopped it.  Our Maytags never did any of that.  I remember back in late '80s or early '90s Consumer Reports said the Maytag was better at handling off balance loads.

 

[vacerator]

Old GE fillter flo's;

Greg, and GAN, the ones with the concrete (ceement in Ark.) block and cable to balance them?

 

[gansky1]

Ballast block and cable -

Yes, that's what we had.

 

I had an unbalanced load in my Hotpoint the other night, a fleece jacket in a load of mixed cottons.  I knew it was going to be a trouble maker when I put it in and sure enough, I had to go sprinting back to the basement when it started that bump-scrape dance.  Of course, I wasn't standing over the machine watching, I'd wandered off to gaze at some other shiny object.

Poly fleece holds a lot of water but releases it quicker and then weighs nothing compared with cottons and denims that hold much more moisture in the fiber.  Instant off-balance test.  This time, it was on the final spin and the jacket was bunched up all on one side.  It must have been more equally arranged in the wash-spin as that went through with no trouble.