FB MarketPlace Find: 1985 SPIN-DRAIN Kenmore DD!

[ddfan92]

Today I had planned to get this machine which was located about 2-½ hrs away from home in Buhl ID since it was a freebie (mom also came along for the ride and we did some other sight-seeing in Twin Falls for her mother's day present, great day all around). Guy said it wouldn't spin, to which I determined is a bad lid switch. Gonna have to see if they still make those lid switches with the round-pin connectors. Plugged it in briefly and dry-tested it with the lid switch jumped--everything appears to not only work but is also ALL original! Very happy and blessed to have been able to score this one! Will definitely post about cleaning it and whatever else pops up with it.

24" Kenmore 20 series mod# 110.81321120, ser# C51127718

I've also had the thought of maybe converting it to a neutral drain DD while still retaining (no pun intended) the clothes retainer look of the filter flos. The hardest part about doing that would be adding a pause step in the timer cam motor-hi switch since this one runs the motor on the bottom cam position. If it were on top, that'd be much easier to just notch out a pause portion in between step increments, and Bob's your uncle (Betty's your aunt).

 

[Chetlaham]

Email me the high def images, that machine is a beautiful piece of history!

 

 

Personally I'd keep the spin drain. It is more fun to watch and speaking from personal experience I've gotten better results from a spin drain than from a neutral drain.

 

 

This washer is the best of the best cleaning and longevity wise. The dependability of these early DDs rivals a Maytag dependable care. 

 

[combo52]

Basic 24 inch 1985 whirlpool built direct drive washer

There are still thousands of machines like this out there that thing is totally original very cool, the neutral drain transmission will drop right in but the machine as you know has to pause briefly after about a minute of pumping out to make it kick into the spin cycle.

Whirlpool never made a conversion for those. The only thing we could do with them when people complained about all the linting and re-deposited scumfrom the spin drain. They were giving out a blue, dual action agitator that we were putting in under warranty that helped a little bit.

The water pump is original and real, unfortunately, the top seals in the transmission are leaking oil, another common problem with these early direct drives as the front motor bearing may be developing play, and the motors is tended to fail.

You can easily substitute a newer lid switch just by slicing the wiring properly.

It should be a fun machine not good for real large items however but it’ll do a lot of laundry. Try to keep the wash time as short as possible to minimize clothing wear and lint problems.

John L

 

[Chetlaham]

I wonder if all the linting could have been from the 6 minute agitation rinse time of these early DDs compared to the gentler 2 minute rinse time of the belt drives prior. I could see why someone could inadvertently make the assumption the linting was the result of spin drain.

 

[ddfan92]

Welp.....I spoke too soon. This is why it's always wise to test your machines both without AND with a load (even just water) in it. When ran empty/dry it doesn't do this. Agitator gear in the transmission is shot. No big deal since I have spare parts on hand, but still a bummer.

 

[ddfan92]

John L

On the blue DA agitator John, do you have a picture of what it looked like?

I knew the pump was OEM, just found it real interesting that they didn't put a mark like a rhombus or a circle or an "X" like on the later ones. The part# for this pump is 63347. The one that came before that was #62516 which is like what your 1981 D2000 machine would have had. The one from my 86 Kenmore 60 series center-dial machine (which was a revised version of the 1983 model spin-drain machine to now have a neutral drain) was 64076, and that had the rhombus on it. According to the box for the NOS pump I bought a couple months ago, (part# 3348015) it replaced that 64076 pump, and this one had the circle marking instead, which then was later replaced in 1990 or so by the pump with the "X" which is part# 3352492. That has now evolved into 3363394 which is what you can buy new today. Irrelevant history lesson I know, but still interesting how they built them back then compared to now. Even things like the clutches were different then too, this one has the single pad which just goes all the way around the clutch band. Guess they would have had to build them that way to withstand the spin-drain, because it still seems to work just fine despite!

I've got plenty of transmission seals on hand.

Suppose I could splice one in if I had to, but I'll exhaust the options of keeping it original first and if all else fails, resort to that method.

Indeed it will be a fun machine for sure. Didn't drive all that way for nothing that's for sure lol.

 

[Chetlaham]

No, very relevant. Someone needs to archive this important piece of engineering history. 

 

My honest opinion is that these early direct drives and the ones that followed up to the mid 90s were peak DD. These machines would just last and last. This machine is very much worth a rebuild.   

 

[combo52]

Early through mid 80s whirlpool direct drive washers

Hi Steven, whirlpool made a number of minor changes on the water pump to improve problems that they encountered the little markings you’re talking about were sometimes added to indicate that it was an updated water pump. I think one of the first things they did is they added those sets of little water, straightening veins inside the inlet and outlet to keep the pump from air locking or something.

The first clutches did have the one piece band that went all the way around, but they also used the six pad clutch on the spin drain machines. The machine was definitely sturdy enough for spin drain operation, it’s unfortunate that they didn’t do enough testing out in the field and didn’t realize That people who had had whirlpool top loading washers for the paste 30 years were used to a higher level of performance when it came to linting, etc. I will never forget how irate several customers were that I had to deal with with these early direct drive machines they were almost all customers who hung things on the line, but they were just furious that whirlpool could sell such a product and we actually had to take the direct drive machines back and give them a belt dry whirlpool cause they were still producing both.

I’ve also had quite a few customers who have hated the new VMW washers and we’ve exchanged those for a rebuilt belt drive and mostly direct drive machines, people mostly didn’t like the fact the lid lock as soon as you started the thing. But whirlpool is still the top builder of top loading washers in the United States and people are not walking around and dirty and tattered clothing, there’s several people on the site who are really happy with their VMW washers.

This is what led to the workaround where they tried to redesign it to do a neutral drain that was definitely an afterthought and was not as well engineered as the rest of the machine and as we all know, a lot of neutral drain Direct drive machines failed a neutral drain after a good bit of use.

I do not have a picture of that light blue agitator readily available. It was exactly the same agitator used on similar Kenmore models, but they tinted it blue for some reason so it didn’t look like they were just sticking the Kenmore agitator into whirlpool models on the service end, I think I have one somewhere, but I have so many agitators. It’s not funny.

 

[maytag85]

I think the direct drives (in the early stages and years) didn’t have nowhere near as much testing done since the spin drain models had a tendency of linting things up and the short 90 degree strokes didn’t really help much either, especially when the machine was packed full. You could get away with loading a belt drive up fairly heavily since the longer strokes were more gentle.

While the belt drives had their own idiosyncrasies etc, more tests were done since they were building appliances for Sears and wanted to get the best reputation as much as possible. Could be the belt drive design just didn’t have as many issues out from the starting gate, which is why it proved itself fairly quickly in a short amount of time.

Belt drives after heavy usage never had issues with the neutral drain, the Whirlpool I picked up back in 2020 looks like it had quite a bit of usage (at least from what I could tell by the wear on the dryer drum) since it was in service from 1963 to 2005, when I powered it up and ran through various cycles, worked as it should and still does.