The Economat and semi-automatic Dial-a-Mat were great sellers for a couple of reasons. First, they were cheap automatics and semi-automatics because they only needed a wringer washer transmission since they did not spin. Because they did not spin, no suspension was needed either. Second, because they did not spin, they were the first automatics allowed in apartment houses where you could not bolt a washer to the floor and where the landlords did not want the vibration of anything that spun. And, while the system might seem hokey today, the planned laundry for the international space station will use a tumbler style machine to wash the clothes and then a balloon of sorts will inflate to squeeze the water out so that there will not be any vibration to knock the space station out of orbit. I wonder how fast the damp clothes would be freeze-dried if they were exposed to the vacuum of space? If you hung them on a line to dry, they would hang up without gravity and clothes that might be on the floor in some bedrooms would be up against the ceiling. With a vacuum all around the space station, all it would need for a central vac would be wall valves and the hose and attachments. No bags to change or collection chamber to empty and except for the rushing air, it would be quiet. But I digress.
Even though the agitator looked like the Maytag Gyrator, it did not have the metal spline where it engaged the agitator shaft from the transmission and the plastic splines were not as durable, but they lasted about as long as the washer did. The center seal tended to wear kind of quickly and water would leak into the transmission. Once it started leaking oil onto the floor, its days were numbered. The other thing is that the same size agitator in the Bendix gave fabulous roll-over because, just below the narrowed collar where the lid sealed, the tub expanded to become quite wide. I used to think it was so neat to watch the water slosh over the top of the agitator. caused by the top of the agitator being so close to the water level in the tub. If you operated one with the cabinet opened, you could see the tub flex in and out and back and forth with the water currents during agitation. You had to fill it for wash before adding the detergent and clothes because dry clothes in the tub would signal a full tub of water before the tub was full. The water level switch was activated by the the weight of the water in the rubber tub forcing the wall of the tub to expand outward and exert pressure against a metal band around it. The lid springs tended to get weak with age and then the oldest child in the family would have to sit on the lid to hold it closed during the suction extraction.
The pump that had the long sort of wavey shaft that spun inside the long rubber doughnut was unique in that it could suck air and water and was used in the first Whirlpool and Kenmore combos, where areas of the water path to the pump were located above the maximum fill level of the sump and did not hold water after the machine was drained, although some remained in the sump. The water was pulled from the bottom of the sump, up and through the lint filter, which in those machines was flat like a comb with long metal teeth, and then into this same pump. Because the pump could pull air from the higher parts of the system, it was self priming. In later versions of the combo, the filter was curved and went in and down before locking into place so water filled the path from the sump to the filter by gravity. A simpler pump was used in those.
