Candy Turbomatic
The Candy Turbomatic shown above: I used to have one. I picked it up from the roadside, it had been thrown out as the dryer fan was rusted out. The washing function still worked perfectly. I gave it to my partner's sister who used it for several years, it was her first front loader and she loved it.
The motor had an expanding pulley which gave a substantial increase in spin speed. At tumble speed the pulley would be contracted so the belt sits low between the two pulley halves. When it engages spin, the centrifugal weights would be thrown outwards which forces the two pulley halves closer together, squeezing the belt towards their outer diameter thus effectively doubling the pulley size. Thus a simple two speed induction motor which would normally give 400 rpm spin, gives 800 rpm which was pretty good for its time. It was very well engineered so that when it first started to spin the accumulated water in the drum loaded up the motor and it didn't get to the speed required to operate the expanding pulley, so it spun slowly at first. As the last water was pumped out, the motor would speed up a little and the centrifugal pulley would kick in, speeding up the drum to a blistering 800 rpm. The expanding pulley works the same as a CVT car transmission, the technology was first seen in the Daf Variomatic, a marvellous little Dutch car which was released in 1958. They were never sold here though I have seen one private import. The Candy washers were never sold here either -I guess the one I scored was thrown out because the dryer fan was not available here.
A lovely machine.
Chris.
lol 
