Thanks, Cory!
Of course, nothing is said about the tremendous noise from these machines. I remember two of these in friends' kitchens. With no suspension, all of the motor & mechanical noise goes right through the machine chassis to resonate through the floor and in a small room they were very loud. One friend's mother stopped hers when her detective husband got home from work even if it was drying because all of that mechanism was moving even during drying including the powerful blower and it was heavy metal parts all attached to the base and frame. It was a lot louder than the redesigned 29" combo. Showing her starting it and leaving was a self defense mechanism.
The first models had a kick out bar that you see running across the back of the outer tub between the tub and the pulley that was too weak and instead of hitting the out of balance switch, it flexed and allowed the machine to walk instead of stopping the spin for a redistribution tumble. Sometimes they blocked doors and sometimes they walked out of closets and blocked hallways.
The electric Kenmore combo was able to achieve the shorter drying time by having the option to run it on a 50 amp circuit, something no other combo offered, as far as I know. The gas combo, not mentioned here had a powerful 37K burner which gave fast drying, but also had the burner right next to the sump in the tank of the outer tub. Many of these machines rusted out when the intense heat of the burner destroyed the porcelain on the steel tank during the drying when there was no water in the sump to dissipate the heat from the burner.
I am not so sure about that claim that high sudsing detergents could be used in these machines either. High suds could clog the pump. It took very little detergent to wash in such a small amount of water; one cap of Wisk was all that was needed to produce clean laundry. I saw a horrifying picture in a magazine of the beach home of the Arthur Murrays. One of his grown daughters was shown preparing to add a cup of Tide to their Whirlpool combo.
