GE Plastisol to Perma-Tuf transition case history

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Our first dishwasher was a GE with the pull-out tub. It was bought by my grandfather as a Christmas gift for my mom in 1958. He had moved in with us after my step-grandmother died in Aug. 1955, and I guess he thought that since he was making more work for my mom, that he would get her the machine. This was after my sister arrived in May of 1958, so she was plenty busy with two small kids.

This DW had a Salmon Pink Plastisol interior, and it did get nicked up from dropped forks & knives. The machine lasted until the winter of 1971, when it sprang a leak in the bottom. The repairman came and looked at it and said the bottom of the tub was rusted out. At this time, she got the KitchenAid KDI-16, which was a much better machine.
 
Interesting Article

Hi Joe, GE never had a drop door DW with a porclean interior with the exception of the low end rebadged Hotpoint style models that they started selling in the early 80s when GE switched their entire DW line to all plastic tub models.  The main reason GE started selling these low end HP style porclean DWs was GE was worried about lousing builder sales because their DWs  had an all plastic tub and they worried about acceptance with builders and consumers alike.

 

The one thing you can credit GE with is they put millions of built-in DWs into American homes, The US quickly had the highest percentage of homes that had DWs in the world and still has the highest percentage today.

 

The GE Plastic-sol DWs were cheap to build throughout the 60s-70s, the plastic-sol coated steel tubs were far cheaper to make than porclean on steel and saved GE hundreds of thousands of dollars in loses due to shipping and other handling damage due to chipped tubs that often caused entire new DWs to be scraped.

 

Stainless Steel was out of the question for home machines in the 60s due to cost and scarcity of nickle to make SS. The only company that made real SS DW tubs in the US was KA and it was a one hundred option only on their TOL models 15-18 series DWs. [ Thermador did build expensive SS DWs in the mid to late 60s, the TD-WK DWs that came later were not real SS ]

 

 
 
lol, yahhh, thats not a model Ive seen in person. Your model might have been GSD500D which was the first BOL Perma-Tuf machine.

For those that knows, was the porcelain Hotpoint really cheaper then the Perma-tuf machines? Id imagine builders really needed a distrust of plastic.
 
The Canadian GE potscrubber that we had in the late 70's has a porcelain tub and door liner. White with green speckles, with green racks. With the big GE flat wash arm, tower and a top mini shower arm.
The top rack was definitely a GE rack, not Hotpoint. Harvest Gold on the outside. Probably made by the Camco plant in Montreal. I'll have to find some pictures.
 
A few observations...the Canadian design had as an uplevel option the enhanced filtering which was in the uplevel US permatuf machines...wasn't the same back-of-tub design, but was common. Note also the location of the silverware in a GE didn't rub the silverware against the tub side. Finally, the point here about the initial quality experience of plastisol being better...a cracked porcelain tub in shipping would be fatal...same shock on a plastisol tub would be unnoticeable.
 
My mother's cousin had a BOL GE d/w with Plastisol, builder grade with dial lower on the door panel, below the latch/handle.  Harvest gold, early 70's.  She piled that machine full, never rinsed and loved the results.  When it finally gave up she bought another GE, BOL with the HP porcelain tank and had no complaints.   We had lots of big family dinners at their house, Bob would have been heaven.   I was never as happy with the outcome of either of those GE normal cycles compared with our '81 Maytag Jetclean, but she was fine with it as were millions of people just happy to have a dishwasher in their new apartment.  

 

 
 
Must have been the last model before the Perma-Tufs. GSD500D came about in April of 1983, so it must have been the one prior.

Do you remember the cycle sequence by chance? GE did away with the 3rd post prewash rinse on porcelain tubs starting in 1979 and early perma-tufs.
 
Hmmmm

I wonder if we had the Canadian version because it did have a white interior with green specks. This was in NH, so it's def possible that we got a Canadian model.
 
From what I remember...and this a stretch back to 1995....
The Normal wash from the top of the timer I believe was:
R R W R R R D

Short Wash was:
R W R R R D

Again, Plastisol GE GSD500. Late 70s. Green Racks.
Green 2-arm PowerShower
Steel 'clown shoe' wash arm.
 
Normal: WRWRRD

China/Crystal: RWRRD

Pots/Pans: WRWRRD

On the last two heating element is shut off after five minutes of drying. Normal gives 22 minutes of heating drying.

China/Crystal skips first wash by asking user to turn dial past that mark.

Since the detergent dispenser is only tripped for main wash in theory first "wash" could be a rinse if nothing is added.

Have to dig out my Hotpoint under counter convertible and built in service/parts manuals to see their cycles.
 
First Perma-Tufs

Is was W-R-R-MW-R-R:

http://products.geappliances.com/Ma...l/Dispatcher?RequestType=PDF&Name=49-5337.PDF

It then went to W-R-R-MW-R-R-R in the late 80s:

http://products.geappliances.com/Ma...l/Dispatcher?RequestType=PDF&Name=49-5485.PDF

Why GE eliminated one of post main wash rinses on all porcelain tubs and Permatufs between 1979 and 1987 is one of the biggest mysteries in my book. (I really wonder about it lol) It looks like it was a water conservation attempt only to maybe have customers complain of detergent residue?
 
I know some Kenmore dishwashers were made by GE...

Did those versions have the Plastisol tubs or were they porcelain? Also, the ones built by D and M, did those units have the problem of the porcelain cracking during shipping? As I remember, the D and M Kenmores, even though not the best, did seem more solid than the GEs and Whirlpools at the time.
 
I have to wonder whether the dishes wouldn't already be clean after all that pre-rinsing. Benefit is at least the water line is purged (and then some), so you don't have to.

Having triple-rinsing after the wash doens't bug me - don't mind having detergent residue completely removed, but triple pre-rinsing might be excessive.
 
Many but short cycles

Remember these GE dishwashers only heated the water for main wash cycle *and* the heating unit wasn't very powerful (hence the poor drying of later models). Nor did they have built in food disposers (macerators). Finally they had to make due with the very caustic but lacking enzyme detergents of the period.

For main wash cycle the first "wash" used incoming tap water of 140F-160F, however that water would have been tempered by the cold water sitting in sump (from last cycle) and the cold interior of dw and dishes themselves. This combined with detergent would help to shift protein soils before temps of subsequent cycles cooked them onto dishes.

The second cycle (rinse) helped remove more soil and flush away debris.

By the time of main event (wash cycle) the unit was sufficiently heated that incoming water would remain (more or less) at required temperature for the duration of short wash cycle. The heaters in these Mobile Maids is at best to keep water temps from dropping. The main wash is too short and heater too puny for it to raise temps that much if any.

The next two short rinses do just that; carry away soil, detergent, muck, etc.. with the last adding rinse agent to promote drying.

According to my copies of Hotpoint parts and service manuals (from the 1960's) techs were warned against substituting a higher wattage (more powerful) heating element due to risk of damaging the Plastisol liner. Consumer Reports of the 1950's gave GE dishwashers very good ratings for cleaning, but poor for drying.
 
GE DW WASH CYCLES

The first rinse is actually intended as a wash if you read the operating instructions, there is also a pre-wash detergent cup next to the closed cup to help the user to measure detergent for the pre-wash.

 

IMEO it is never a good idea to run a DW with soiled dishes and no detergent, it just leads to strange gunky build-ups in hidden areas of the DW.

 

All the GE-HP-GE MM models being discussed in this thread DO have soft-food-disposers built into the pump assembles.

 

John L.
 

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