Re: designgeek
The power we use here is the same used in the US. Actually it´s really weird to find someone that uses 220V. Just factories I guess.
It´s a shame there are no Old Appliances Stores here. When people throw away appliances, they usually get new ones for little prices. You can get an excellent washer for 200 USD or less that can last a life time. Sometimes people prefer to buy semi-automatic machines rather than automatics because of repair costs, lack of space, water waste. Don´t know but there are thousands of excuses for not buying automatics.
The brands that we used to have (the best ones ever, well made, durable, excellent cleaning performance, etc)were Easy Golden Line Automatic Washer (Spirilator agitator). After a while its factory decided to stop producing Golden Line and then produced another model which has a kind of Spirilator agitator and into it you can fit a mini washing basket (it was very alike to the Old GE Filter flow with the detergent dispenser on top of the agitator). This washer was still awesome but was produced for just a couple of years. After that they introduced the double duty agitator and its junk ID system which is suposed to detect the fabric type, weight and soil levels. In my opinion this thing sucks, it doesn´t get your clothes clean, they break off easily, they select the amount of water they supose they need and so much more. I think we should control the washer and not the washer control us.
There was also another brand called Bendix Aquamagic which was top load and it had an agitator like the 3 ring Frigidaire, but this one had just one on the buttom of the tub which had a wave form and a blue color, and it had a huge cylinder filter on top of the wave ring which could be removed to clean the lint.
Another is Koblenz which can also clean excellent and last for at least 20 years.
Some other brands are IEM (semiautomatics), Twin Tub Easy, Mabe, Acros, Supermatic. The last 3 have almost the same shape as portable Whirlpools have. After that Whirlpool was introduced in the Mexican market and almost all this brands desapear. Actually they continue producing Easy Id System, GE Id System, IEM (junk), Acros (junk), Crolls was discontinued 10 years ago because Whirlpool bought the company to enter the country and they stopped producing Crolls.
By the way, my Crolls was the last one produced all around the country. I bought it directly from the factory and the engineer told me that was the last one they have all around the place. That makes me prouder of my washer. It´s a pitty that when you need any parts, its really difficult to find them, they don´t produce them anymore. You can find them but they won´t be original. Mine hasn´t need any big repair, as a fact it has´t required any reapair at all. I just painted last summer and thats all.
The actual market is Whirlpool´s, Maytag´s, LG´s, GE´s, Easy Stupid Id System, somewhat Kenmore´s and thats all you can get here. There are some other brands also for sale but they are not worth writting (they SUCK!!!!!!!!!!)
PS. I will look for some pictures of the brands I find, and will post them.