Design patents held by AVCO (Aviation Corporation) which owned Bendix, prohibited any other washer dryer combination from using a suspended (springs and shock absorbers) mechanism which limited the spin speed to one low enough to keep the machine stable on the floor. Even at that if the unbalance switch failed, the combos could walk. Whirlpool had cases of the combos walking to the length of their connections and blocking doors to laundry rooms. Your GE has a speed limiter switch in the left front foot. The machine rides up and down on this and if the spinning causes the machine to ride up and down too fast due to an unbalance, the switch returns it to a tumble to redistribute the load. You can override it by sitting on that corner of the machine.
When the engineers at Whirlpool redesigned the original combo to the 29" combo, they put in the water balancing system which used the three baffles in the drum as tanks to hold ballast water. The water was injected into the tanks from a spray at the front of the tub. A diverter valve that normally fed the filter stream switched to feed water to this balancing mechanism ring. The flexible frame around the machine would flex when an unbalanced load pulled it to the upper left hand side. When that flexing occurred, there was a little flag in the spray that moved to divert the water spray into the tank opposite the heavy spot at the 10 o'clock position. In so doing, it also bled off air that was being pumped into the clutch on the front of the transmission to keep the speed from increasing until the balance was perfect so there was a chugging acceleration to get an unbalanced load up to speed. Originally, the spin speed was 500 RPM, but the machines underwent retrofitting and there were big changes. The spin speed was reduced to 400 RPM . Think of the dynamic forces of that basket with a load of laundry and water in one or two of the tanks spinning along at 400 RPM. If somehow that tub broke loose, it would do serious damage. The water was held in the tanks by the centrifugal force of the spinning of the tub. When the spin terminated, there was the initial rush of water down the drain that was sitting in the sump of the outer tub followed by the water draining out of the balance tank or tanks as the tub slowed. This was the only domestic washer-dryer combination that was able to achieve a spin speed that came close to a Bendix Duomatic. Decades later, the ZUGG combination from Switzerland did a similar balancing routine, but they used fresh, not recirculated, water. That would eliminate one of the situations I encountered with a piece of lint making it past the lint filter and hanging up on the little diverter flag in the balance spray system causing the water to spray toward the tanks all the time resulting in the machine balancing then unbalancing itself. It was a complicated machine. John's brother Jerry counted that it had as as many parts as a VW Beetle and in a much smaller space.
Very cold water did indeed help speed the drying in condenser combos. In Atlanta, our water came out under a dam and it was cold all the year around. If you entered the Chattahoochee River Rambling Raft Race, you wanted to make sure that your raft was water tight and sea worthy because you did not want to be thrown into that frigid water. The laundering instructions on my parent's London Fog and Misty Harbor raincoats said to rinse them thoroughly in cool water and that was about the only time we used the "Cool" water temperature setting on the 1958 Lady Kenmore. I still remember the difference between that tempered water and the stinging cold of the tap cold water.
One way that GE and some other combos boosted the water extraction abilities was by pausing the spin a few times to allow the load to drop from the tub and be repositioned with different items against the tub for the next spin period. It was described as similar to how you can squeeze more water out of a sponge if you grab it in different positions each time you squeeze. GE and other combos also switched on the dry heater during the final spin to not only heat the load for drying, but also to soften the fabrics and make them squeeze easier to give up more water in the spin. If a HOT wash was selected, the three rinses in a GE combo were COLD, WARM and HOT for the same reason.
[this post was last edited: 3/10/2021-10:58]
