Colston Ariston Automatic Wash and Tumble Dry 850 XD

[sesteve]

Hi folks

I recently acquired one of these machines - an old favourite of mine. It's in great cosmetic condition with just a bit of rust around the dispenser but the chrome, paintwork and controls are in good nick. However, it's not working properly - I'll come on to that in a minute. First here are a few pics

 

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Full frontal

 

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Controls close up

 

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Internals

 

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Rear view

 

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Must be a nightmare to trace out wiring faults! They are virtually the same colours!

 

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And now to the problem - the big induction motor

 

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When I tried it out on a test spin there was a popping noise, the smell of ozone and the drum wouldn't spin. Further investigation revealed a wire to the motor was broken

 

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However, all of the wires coming out of the motor have perished and need replacing

 

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The big question is how. This is as far as I have been able to go with the motor strip down. Not sure how the core comes out. I did speak to a motor rewind place but they wanted silly money. I think they were a bit dodgy though.

Have any other AW ers had a similar issue? Not sure what to do as would love to get this up and running again.

 

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Finally, not sure if there is damage on the rotor as it is marked with lines on one side but not the other

 

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Final pic from me. Any help would be greatly appreciated to get this old classic back up and running

S

 

[robliverpool]

I had that exact same machine briefly for a few months. Weighed an absolute ton but was fun to use. Only downside was having to pull it out from under the worktop when the dryer was in use.

I'm sure someone will help you sort this out.
Great machine though...

 

[keymatic3203]

Hi Steve

Nice machine, and great cosmetic condition. I have had to replace these wires before on a couple of older motors like this.

You are practically there, firstly it looks as though a few of the conections are around the top of the coils as we see in the photo of the coils, with nothing to loose but the chance of success, i would have an educated guess and follow the visible wires and cut the string holding the wrapped up conection and cut it open with side cutters. Now when ive done this on the motors ive worked on, the supply wire and coil wire have simply been twisted and soldered, so i've done the same and then slide heat shrink sleaving over the joint and put the wiring back with cable ties and a blob of epoxy glue. I would be suprised if you need toget the coils out, as it looks as though all the connections are around the top.

If you do get have to get the coils out, then check around the body of the motor for welds or as I have found a rivot holding the coils in place, you'd then have to drift or grind the weld/rivot out, then using a club hammer and slim bolster chisel drift it apart. I had to do this with an old english electric wringer washer motor, to reassemble, i put the outer metal body of the motor in the oven to warm up and expand, then the coils went back in a little easier. But as I say I doubt you'd have to go that far.

Well all the best with the repair, it's lovely to watch that variable pulley as the spin kicks in, something different from our british brush motor machines.

I know the picture doesn't help, just shows one I've done, it's from an acme sun breeze dryer.

Mathew

 

[hotpoint9534]

Great machine. My grandparents used to have the washer only version of this machine until about 1992, unfortunately I can't remember the model number. I've only seen examples of the washer-dryer version since though, so I guess it was more common.

Tom

 

[vacbear58]

Colston

Great catch Steve. If you are short of parts drop and email to "MatchboxPaul" - they purchased a similar machine in the last 12 to 18 months which I believe was to be a donor for parts for another example they have

Al

 

[vacbear58]

@Mathew

I could not help but have a chuckle as i saw the precision tools you have lying by that old motor

Al

 

[MrX]

My grandparents had one of these until the early 2000s I vaguely remember it.
It was called a Thor 850XD here though.

They were a bit of a crazy design by any standards!

The dryer is vented, and just blows the steam straight out through those two hoses and a filter straight into the room! So, if it's under a countertop it's an absolute disaster as you couldn't access the fluff filter and you also couldn't connect up any kind of exhaust hose to deal with the steam.

The two chrome bars bars lift up at 90º to bring down casters to move the machine. Quite a clever idea which should have been adopted by more manufacturers !!

It also does no spin distribution at all if I remember correctly.

Basically the pump comes on and it will sit pumping out for ages then just all of a sudden click into full 850RPM spin and shake like crazy.

Also there's a switch in the drawer that pauses the cycle if you open it. This often shook out during the spin resulting in the machine stopping. I'm not sure if that was intentional or just a happy coincidence to avoid your house being shaken to bits

It also has a pre-pump filter which looks a bit like a comb. It's just a whole load of plastic spikes arranged in a circle on the filter cap. It is not self-cleaning and will catch loads of lint which meant that cleaning the filter was a regular chore for no real reason as the pump should have been able to handle small amounts of lint no problem like modern machines.

That machine finally gave up when the outer tub corroded and it was irreparable.

Oh the other thing, for some reason they tended to suffer a lot of pump failures. Again, not sure why this was.



They're made by Riber of Italy

 

[optima]

Colston

Great Machine you have got your hands on there Steve. Fingers crossed that you will get this beauty back in action soon. Keep us all informed on the progress, wish i could be of some help.

 

[MrX]

This is its slightly older 1974 washer-only predecessor



Coleston, Thor and a few other brands seem to have simply been purchasing and rebadging Riber machines.

 

[docker]

"They're made by Riber of Italy"

These were sold as Indesit 525 in SA & Oz.

 

[ozzie908]

Lines on the rotor

Are for balance and to make the rotor run true centre.

 

[hotpoint9534]

I remember the washer only version of the Colston had a very odd final spin cycle, where it would continuously speed up, slow down, speed up etc. Never seen anything like it before or since.

 

[electron1100]

Man and Machines

Hello Steve what a great machine, all mechanical, these sort of machines tick my boxes, engineering and engenuity, i love it.
I can only endorse what Mat has said about replacing the failing motor wires, take your time keep a clear head, and it can be done.

Als comment about Mats professional tool kit is well spotted, I always have a "Universal Adjuster" or "Harry the Hammer" close at hand as do others that I know ;-) the only extra tool I have is a packet of fags and an ashtray.

Good luck
Gary

 

[gizmo]

"I remember the washer only version of the Colston had a very odd final spin cycle, where it would continuously speed up, slow down, speed up etc. Never seen anything like it before or since. "

The reason for this is the clever motor arrangement. These use a particular type induction motor, a characteristic of which was a very slow spin. There just isn't a great enough difference between the slow speed (for wash) and the fast speed (for spin). A few Italian machines of this era used an expanding pulley to speed up the spin speed - on wash the two halves of the pulley would be wider spaced, so the belt would run on the inner edge of the pulley, a smaller diameter and thus slower speed. When the motor hit spin speed, the pulley would expand due to centrifugal weights behind the pulley forcing the two halves closer together, thus squeezing the belt to the outer edge of the pulley... larger diameter pulley gives faster belt speed. As the pulley expands, the motor rises up on the belt and moves closer to the drum.
Indesit used a clever extra feature - a microswitch is fitted between the motor and drum. When the slower spin speed is selected, the motor spins up to speed till the motor rises up and compresses the switch, then the power to the motor is cut, the motor slows, the pulley opens up and the motor drops back down...till the switch is released, then the motor starts up again, expanding the pulley, lifting the motor, compressing the switch and turning the motor off again, to repeat the cycle.
If you select the fast spin speed - a blazing 800 rpm - then that microswitch is bypassed, so the motor runs at full speed for the entire spin time.

I really like these machines, I have owned a couple some years ago. Mine were South African orphan imports, they had four option buttons and a black fascia instead of chrome.

I have a spare motor for these in my shed, but it is on the wrong side of the planet to be any use to you - postage would be prohibitive.

 

[docker]

Indesit 2527

Chris, Those South African orphan imports were Indesit serie 2000 machines.

 

[MrX]

I still can't remember what the A and B buttons did.

S was just on/off.

 

[MrX]

I remember it as being a fairly quiet machine though, other than having a very noisy pump!

Is the induction motor English Electric ?

The only very big flaw on the design was how it handled dryer exhausting. It really should have had a filter somewhere accessible and a hose out the back.

It was fine if you were using the machine without a worktop over it and in a well ventilated shed. However, I remember the one I was familiar with completely destroyed work tops by constantly blasting out steam. Even the wash cycle caused a lot of steam if it was 60ºC.

They were actually an excellent tumble dryer though, albeit tiny load capacity.

My granny had the Thor 850XD washer/dryer and also a Hoover Tumble Dryer Deluxe

She'd tend to use the 850XD just to dry maybe a few small things as it was more economical to run than the big vented dryer (although, I'd have my doubts to be honest!)

There was also a slight problem in so far as if there was a major suds lock causing foam to spew up, the foam could back up into the dryer blower! Didn't seem to worry it though.

 

[statomatic]

Hi, very nice machine, another solution is to put the wires in shrink tubes, I did this on a machine of my collection, it works very fine.

 

[ozzie908]

A and B buttons were I believe...

Short spin was one and the other raised the water level for delicates and wool etc.

 

Does anyone remember the predecessor of this machine and it had the dryer unit built into the door?

 

They were good for their time !

 

Oh and if you look at the bundle of wires in the pics above they are not as hard to trace as you think as each has a unique number that is on each end !

 

Austin