Exciting New Arrivals Part 1

[panthera]

I am SO fascinated

I have read of these, but never seen one. I would be terrified that that tub would not just collapse, but break apart.
Could it be that the silvery object connected to the hoses is designed to prevent the vacuum in the tub from sucking water back up or in or some such? Not just an "air gap" but a real valve structure (reed?). Just guessing here, I truly have no idea. Looking forward to more - thanks for sharing!

 

[frigilux]

Boy, this and the AMC---you're on a roll, Jimmy!

 

[irishwashguy]

My mother had one of these machines.....

My mom had told me about this machine,it was her first Washer and dryer, but I had never seen one of these,even in a picture until a month or two ago on this site. She always taked about the Bendix with the strage rubber tub. i had always imagined that it would spin,I had never phathomed that it would squeze the water out. I can hardly wait to see it in action.My mother replaced it with a 1964 Kenmore with the ovals and the black surgulator.Do u know the vintage on this one?

 

[mayken4now]

That's a cool machine.

Good luck and many days of joy with that one.

Steve

 

[JerseyMike]

Wow!

Another great gift. I'm practically speachless. I hope you can get it up and running without too much trouble. I look foward to seeing the after pics!

Mike

 

[gansky1]

This looks like it's starting to clean up beautifully. I was amazed at how many rubber bits are inside this machine to seal it up tight for the vacuum-extraction. That valve on the side of the tub has a rubber diaphram inside to seal the water fill system for extraction, it's connected to the aspirator at the top of the machine, which also has another seal for the air-gap assembly.

 

[jamman_98]

Ok Explain to me

I hope I'm not the only member who is going to ask this question but explain what this machine does? It squeezes the clothes instead of centrifical force spinning?

Joe
jamman_98

 

[sudsmaster]

Jamman,

Yes, the water is supposed to be squeezed out. I think Robert had an old Apex that did the same sort of thing. The agitator on the Apex was quite a bit more rounded, very unique.

My take on this is that the mfg's that designed these things were not thinking very outside of the box. Most washers of the day had wringers that squeezed water out of the clothes, either with a hand crank (safer) or a motorized wringer (could be dangerous). The Bendix Economat type of washer simply moved the squeezing process to inside the wash tub... although I understand it was with somewhat mixed results. In some ways, the collapsing rubber tub was simpler than the spinning tub, because it didn't have to have a suspension system or deal with balance issues. But once those issues were figured out by the engineers, obviously the spinning method of extracting water won out over the rubber squeeze tub, probably because it was more efficient and durable. I could see one nail, screw, or metal pen making short work of the squeeze tub.

 

[gansky1]

Made only by Bendix.

Exactly, Rich, the washer uses a special rotary water pump that will not only pump the water out of the machine, but air as well. A very similar pump was used on the early Whirlpool combos for the recirculating spray stream. When all the openings to the tub have been sealed, the pump will draw out all the water used for washing and rinsing and the rubber tub will collapse onto the clothes, pulling them around the base of the agitator. I had one here for a while that Robert had found at a sale a number of years ago. They did a good job cleaning and are a lot of fun to play with but without the special display lid (as pictured in the consumer reports article from the 50's) much of the fun is going on with the lid closed. Extraction was OK, a bit better than a wringer washer but lost extraction efficiency with hot or cold water - ideal performace was with lukewarm water, which the automatic version used for rinsing anyway. The Economat was available in a completely automatic version or a Dial-a-matic version that was user controlled, selecting fill/agitate/extract from a simple dial. It was popular with many because of it's appealing price point (not much more than a wringer washer) and that it didn't spin causing complaints from neighbors and landlords in apartments and it could be easily made portable with an optional caster set... The rubber tub was a huge weakness (obviously) because of the reasons Rich mentioned and was a huge financial drain on Bendix because of the warranty calls on the tub. When Avco/Bendix appliance division was bought out by Philco in 1957, the Economat was promptly retired forever.

Here are some pics of the one Robert found while it was in foster-care here.

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/gansky1/detail?.dir=62a9&.dnm=8f2a.jpg&.src=ph