Can you be SURE if it's Westinghouse?

[mrcleanjeans]

Alright, how many of you read that early 70s appliance book that said best made washer regardless of price-Westinghouse front loader and best made top loader-Maytag? The author touted the Westinghouse as simplistic and efficient more than ANY other. Do you agree or disagree and why? Thanks!

 

[3beltwesty]

Maybe he is referencing consumer reports?

CR/ They about 1978 rated the LT570 and the most thrifty washer in water usage and electricity consumed. We bought ours in 1976. Its bearings got noisy about 1999 and finally the front bearing's cage broke in the summer of 2005. Mine went 2 feet under salt water in Katrina and was rebuilt with stainless 6205 bearings in 2006. It is part now and getting a new shaft 5303261165 since it is worn after 1/3 century.

Really about maybe 1 percent of folks really owned a 1970's 3 belt machine. Folks wanted top loaders. Folks did not care about water usage. There was no government kickbacks to subsidize frontloaders by tax breaks. A frontloader cost more then.

Another problem was since few folks bought front loaders; repair folks were often clueless of issues. If the boot leaked in 15 years the repair was to most difficult, since they had zero experience in simple matters. Many times units were scrapped out. A local repair expert quoted us 260 dollars to replace the boot in 1991, thus I did it. The other two experts said to scrap it. Yet another came to the house and loosened up the drums 4 hanging springs so it hung lower; plus set the water level lower. ie stupid/dumb repair folks in rip off mode.

Our 1976 LT570's sales brochure shows the cost savings of using the FL washer for both electric and gas water heaters, by the cost of gas/electric; by the waters cost too. The average washer buyer did not care about these costs in the 1970's. Some places did not even have water meters then either.

Our 1947 westy laundromat ran from 1947 to 1976. Then we got the LT570 westy. I really only heard about westinghouses rust issues until this forum.

3beltwesty

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[mrcleanjeans]

The book was written about 1972, can't think of the dude's name, but he felt the Westie was the best built of ANY type of washer and was not quoting CU.

 

[combo52]

EARLY 1970S MT & WH WASHERS

I can certainly see how and partly agree with the writers opinions of these two machines. I think that he was recommending MT washers for thier well known reliability and WH FLers for thier washing performance and thrifty use of water and detergent. But WH was never known for good construction or reliability after about thier 1956 models. IMO the last good full sized machines were the 1963 washers and the dryers were a POS by 1959 and none of the washers or dryers ever had anything approaching good reliability after the late 1950s.

 

WH laundry appliances are some of my favorite classic machines, I very much like the three belt machines, I think my favorite were the 1959-1963 slant front washers as they combined the best combination of good performance with cool styling. For overall performance and fun of use I would take a WH FL washer over a MT or GE washer from 1959-1988

 

But you have to remember that WH was one of the first really big companies to sell out of the major appliance business, by the early 1970s  thier slogan YOU CAN BE IF ITS WESTINGHOUSE meant to most consumers that it was JUNK. 

 

[3beltwesty]

Westy experience varies radically; and is often by if repair

Here I only learned that newer westys are POS due to this board. It is quite common ie the norm on this board at times for folks to inject that westinghouses rust out in a few years and are quite troublesome. As a long time westinghouse user this seems odd.

My take is since fewer westys were sold in the 60's to 80's service folks were clueless. The porcelain quality must have varied and folks washing for such varied service histories to happen.

Our 1976 westy and dryer have the same build quality as out older 1947 versions.

To keep a westy going just do not let a local mess one up. The 1976 westy dryer went under 2 feet of salt water in 2005 with Katrina and is my main dryer today. To call it a POS is really comical.

So it appears that both my old gone 1947 set and current 1976 set have been quality machines at my house; but in Combo52's mind/area they are POS and JUNK.

The cool thing is here I only learned that newer westys are a POS due to this board; after using them with little issues for decades. In a few neighbors old westys I have worked on I never have seen major rusting; expect for where the 20 year old boot was allowed to leak for years and the door rusted.

Most local 1970's and 1980's westys I know that were scrapped out were due to repair chaps acting like replacing a boot is like brain surgery or automatic transmission repair. The sad thing is to find a repair person who had ever replaced a boot required one from New Orleans; thus a massive service call. Local repair folks did not even have repair guides. Thus here I replaced the boots on a few neighbors 70's and 80's westys and also regreased the clutch spring. My dad old retired guy place a boot in the 1976 westy back in the early 1990's; all other locals had never replaced one.

Westys have a varied take since few were built and often repair chaps had no clue as how to fix minor issues. Ie they let the 20 year old boot leak and have the door rust out, since tackleing a new boot was not in their DNA, ie inexperienced repair folks.

Another point here is with huricanes like Camille, Georges and Katrina; repair folks get saturated thus quoting super high and saying it cannot be fixed happens a lot. Each major event saturates repair folks thus gobs of older machines of all makes get thrown away; even with minor issues. There is no extra folks to fix items; repair backlogs skyrocket. Folks need a washer thus buy at a box store and old one is hauled off.

the odd thing is a neighbors 1980's 3 belt unit I worked on about 7 years ago really had the same build quality as my 1976 machine. Thus I wonder about all these sellout comments.

One is going to get a radical different set of repair histories on newer 1970's plus westys, few were sold and many repair folks were clueless.

 

[3beltwesty]

At local parts house when I tried to get some 3 belt parts they said they were not available and that was 10 years ago; thus one uses the internet and ebay.

A few repair chaps there at the parts house said they were glad they did not have to work on them, since the boot was so difficult. It is sort of like having an oddball car in the wrong area, repair folks prefer the oddball item be junked.

Thus 10 years ago I bought up some pockets of 3 belt parts locally and once sold them on ebay

 

[neptunebob]

MrCleanjeans, I kind of remember a book like that in our library but the title escapes me.  Maybe I should go there and try to find it. 

 

3BW:  Do you think front loaders would be more popular in America if Westinghouse made them more reliable?  It seems to me of the ones I have seen the metal is very thin, thinner even than a modern Whirlpool.  One of the reasons Maytags survive is because the metal is much thicker.  The door should have been redesigned so as to not be so prone to rust.  It also seems that WH did not offer much support and training to their repair people.  I find it hard to believe that a company as reputable as Westinghouse would cheap out on a product with so much exposure, but then, we Pittsburghers cannot figure what happened to the rest of Westinghouse either.

 

 

 

[3beltwesty]

The sheet metal on my washer on my 1976 washer and dryer is not thinner than other washers I have seen. If anything it is thicker. I really never heard about all these Westinghouse woes until this message board.

Westys that I have seen with rust has been the doors. Service guy cannot will not) replace the boot, has never seen a westy before thus they do something odd like adjust the door hinges, or lower the tubs via the springs and also drop the water level setting on the pressure gauge. ie the service guy masks the problem of a 20 year old boot with a tear. This happened to my machine back in the early 1990's. The same service guy did this to a neighbors machine too. Thus since few bought these machines many just got poor service.

 

[neptunebob]

Many got poor service....

That is the part I wonder about.  I would think a company like WH would have had a good training program for their technicians but they must not have.  I think it would also have helped if there was a Kenmore version so Sears technicians would know what to do.  I know GE used to brag "Customer care Service everywhere" and Sear bragged about their service but was WH so arrogant that the assumed their washers would never need service?  It seems like a good design was done in by poor management.

 

[3beltwesty]

Westinghouse 3 belt machines were actually sold at Sears too. If one googles the model number of the machine the sears parts site will show up the diagrams and parts lists too. The commercial laundromat version of the 3 belt with coin changer also shows up on the Sears website today too.

These 3 belt machines have many different model brand/labels; ie White Westinghouse; Frigidaire, Gibson, J C Penny, Kevinator, even Tappan. I compiled a long list a year ago and it is on a goofed up iMac that I need to pull the hda on.

My own gut feel is that only 1 percent or less bought 3 belt machines in the 1970's and 1980's. This is based on really my own observation. I know darn well it was way less than 10 percent; and probably more than 1/10 percent. If I was at a casino I would bet that is is somewhere around 1/3 to 1 percent.

What are others wild guesses as to what percentage of washers were 3 belt 1970's and 1980's made?

In this area odd brands have poor repair and service. This how well the device survives is impacted by the lack of proper service.

If WH had a varied porcelain firing quality, the issue of rust would be vary even more.

The high tech Hot Point HV886 1971 electronic oven here too had issues with local repair folks. Often they just shotgunned issues with the microwave and one got the shaft with their parts costs. Few of these 1000 + buck early 945 MHZ microwaves in the lower range were sold, thus repair folks often just swapped parts. After about 10 to 12 years it was not worth having the microwave in the lower oven fixed. One of the last local repair places failed to place the schematic of the oven back in the oven; later they went out of business. The next local repair guy had never seen an electronic GE/Hotpoint oven ; had no service manual and no schematic. Thus to get service required a trip from New Orleans; a 3 hour round trip to just show up.

The slinky clutch spring has to be well greased with a boundary layer high pressure grease. One grease recommended was Sinclair Lith grease with LEAD; today this grease is banned. It is the grease machinists hunt for with a lathes live center. Today other greases work OK; if one gets a high pressure type. A lessor grease will wear out the hub and make the machine labor to accelerate into the spin mode. One reason I got into this type of machine is nobody understood them locally. I regreased the clutch and hub.

The small sales of these 3 belt washers in the 1970's and 1980's did not help the service-ability. If anything some of Westinghouses bad mouthing is due to lack of service than build quality. In this area consumer items are often tossed after the repair quotes get high. We had a great 1960's mower that ran well until locals tuned it up and failed to place all the parts back. They failed to place back this piece that prevented grass from getting into the governor area. After cutting the yard 2 times the engine rpms would surge then one had an engine that would die. Each tuneup removed the grass and one got another 2 mowing sessions. We replaced the motor twice and the issues still happened. We had NONE of these problems back in Indiana with the same mower, since the mower was made there and they did not remove the shield.

 

[combo52]

WESTINGHOUSE 3 BELT WASHERS

WH FL washers were easy to work on I loved getting calls on them and I never heard repairmen complaining about having to fix them, with the exception of stacked units in small closets which is still the case today. Many of the stacked FL pairs are almost unrepairable without at least two men and a lot of skill[ as a repair person I would never recommend a stacked laundry installation, unless there is no other option ]. I would ratter install four door boots on 3B WHs than doing one on a Neptune or WP Duet any day.

 

Sears never sold 3BWs, Montgomery Wards did and they put the Wards name on them. Sears did start selling the horrible ill fated single belt machines in the stackable and under counter versions with the KM name on them when they came out around 1989. This was when the Sears Kenmore brand really started to loose a quality image as Sears was bringing in almost any one that would build appliances for them along with selling national brands. This to me was the end of Sears good service as they could no longer stock the needed parts on the truck and the service men were no longer able to keep up with all the different appliances that Sears was selling. This is still one of the major problems with Sears today. 

 

[syndets2000]

inported from the graveyard ...

... this is my L100-M all the way from Aberdeen, SD- I think we were the few first visitors , after it was discovered, I still have many memories of the trip back- I redid the seals & bearings in 96, & got the timer rebuilt at MTS- I know I know, its really rough looking, I have not refinished some parts of it- I finally fitted a new style boot on it, oh, I also wanted to mention this one is a three-belter! I like both the speed changer & three belted ones, lotsa fun-I also used a newer motor & pump too, so I changed the angle of the tub to pump hose- ( our parts place listed that as a SPOOL go figure...)

 

[3beltwesty]

Sears did sell 3 belt washers, but not under an umbrella house name like Kenmore. Sears still has some oddball parts for 3 belt units. The commercial coin 3 belt unit was even once sold by Sears too. At a big Sears store in Los Angeles they had 3 belt Frigidaires. Where Sears sold what brand and model is regional too. Los Angeles is a dry area were there are water shortages, thus a thrifty water saver washer sells better in Santa Barbara than in the South where some homes did not have water meters yet. In Ventura County Calif two laundromats I use to go to had 3 belt units as their token smallest front loader. When in Calif I helped a co worker buy a 3 belt unit from Sears and we picked it up at a Sears warehouse in the San Fernando Valley and got the unit to Simi Valley in his truck. The machine is about 260 Lbs thus fun to move up a ramp into a pickup. Thus was mid 1980's. Like lawn mowers what Sears sells is fleeting. They sell stuff at stores too that are not in national catalogs.

 

[syndets2000]

belted ....

...n need of some paint too haha

 

[circlew]

I can only go by my own experiences with Westinghouse FL washers, the '55 and '64 (or '65 maybe) machines we had. I don't remember any rust on the '55 model, and in fact the porcelain finished wash basket was removed when we got the new machine, and it eventually ended up in the ravine for a number of years after my sister and I tired of playing with it. When I cleaned out the ravine about 20 years later I found it, and it was still not too rusty. The machine that we got in '64 or so was another story. The parts that rusted were the front panel and door, which was the inset type like the Fuchsware washer in another thread. These were NOT porcelain enamel; they were a painted finish. I think the only parts of this machine that were porcelain finished were the outer tub and wash basket. The top may have been, I can't remember. The rust started not long after the washer was purchased, and got progressively worse. It was replaced in '73 with a Maytag, which had probably less than a square inch total of rust after 30 years.

 

[jeb]

Westinghouse washers

One of the rust issues is the finish on the cabinets. Westinghouse invented a process to paint their appliances. It was called " vitreous enamel". The part of the plant that did the painting was called "The vit" My grandmother was "the vit" secretary for years. I think this paint process didn't hold up as well and it is the reason that older Westinghouse appliances don't stay a true white. One of the other reasons front loaders of the 70s lost favor is capacity.At best the front loaders could only do a 14lb load while top loaders were advertising 18-20 lbs. In Ohio there were no water meters and water rates were low while front loader prices were higher, so even in Mansfield (home of the Westinghouse front loader) top loader sales beat out front loaders. JEB

 

[maytagbear]

"in Ohio there were no water meters"

I take a certain exception to that. Kent's water was, and has been, metered for at least 50 years, if not longer.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[3beltwesty]

In my current location we got water meters about 1976; before that it was unmetered. In a Detroit suburb back in the early 1960's we had no meter and had our own well.

 

[arbilab]

Westys: "If the window was round the machine was sound. If the window was square, buyer beware." (If the front was blunt, it was a **nt.)

W'house let their Mansfield works lapse. By the time they caught on, it would have cost so much to update, the products wouldn't have been competitively priced. That's when they dumped the appliance division. Here's the P'bgh Post Gazette story on "Who Killed Westinghouse". http://www.post-gazette.com/westinghouse/beginning.asp
Oops, didn't parse. Us freeloaders are denied formatting. The parsed link is at the bottom.

We had both the gearbox (~1947) version and the 2-belt (1955). Then a square-front FL that needed a lot of repairs and was much harder to load/unload and mom insisted replacing it with a Westy TL. Why did we stay with Westy? Dad worked there, substantial discount on the product but NOT the repairs. The TL wasn't too bad, but by then (late 60s) it wasn't a real Westy either.

The slantfronts I could mostly fix, except the gearbox, had to have that done. The 47 had no boot, we may have had to replace one on the 55 but back then shops knew how to do it. Mostly, stuff (baby socks) found their way into the pump and blocked it, which then either kinked the flex linkage or smoked the clutch wheel, both easily replaced. The spin clutch on the 55 wore, but it was an easy fix too. Wild spins could misposition the compliance springs. We left the top unscrewed so that could be fixed without tools. No trouble with the major parts like drum/bearings, motor or overall rust. I put a new timer in the 47 when I was 9.

When my secondhand Maytag started getting ragged in 1997 I gave it to a chick at work who used it for a year before the motor seized. I got a Frigidaire/GE/Whoever FL and it's been trouble free, VERY unlike MT Neptune of the era. Cuz FL works better, cheaper, doesn't tear up clothes as much as TL. Not to mention my fascination with them. In 1997 just like in 1953, I'd sit in front of it and watch the whole cycle.

http://www.post-gazette.com/westinghouse/beginning.asp