GE Plastisol to Perma-Tuf transition case history

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support AutomaticWasher.org:

Welcome :)

I wonder the same. GE could have just ended plastisol tub production in the mid 60s and sold only the Hotpoint porcelain tub design while gradually introducing Perma-Tuf starting in the late 70s early 80s from BOL working on up. At least thats what they somewhat did in the 80s, as porcelain tub Hotpoint where still available up until 1991 or 1992.

The Hotpoints certainly were not perfect, but light years ahead in longevity. Around here there are dozens of hundred unit apartment/condo complexes from the 80s with porcelain tub BOL Hotpoints. Many still going 30 years latter. Those getting thrown out often have very little or limited rust on the inside. If anything its the seals or pump that give out rather then the tub itself with life expectancy comparable to mid 80s PermaTufs. The top racks were a poor design, but if the GE design was modified to fit those they really would have been admirable.

GE does at times bite off more then they can chew, and as someone once told me "they are to smart for their own good" to which I can agree with.
 
I love GE, but they sure know how to squander a good thing. Or 'value-improve' a product to death.

People forget that at one time they accidentally stumbled into the computer business, designed and built some pretty decent mainframes that even had IBM running scared, and of course decided to only make a half-hearted attempt at keeping the business. The stories from the field engineers are cringe-worthy ; )

"Let's go to a cheaper plated screw to save a few cents in these 100-amp power supplies. Hmm, why are we having all these voltage spike failures? The design is the same." LOL.
 
When I was a kid, we bought a house in 1987 that was built in the early 70's. It had what was probably the original GE dishwasher (in avocado green) with a porcelain enameled interior. That thing worked great despite having a huge rust spot on the inside of the door. I guess my parents weren't worried too much about it because they never replaced it. LOL. I don't remember how it cleaned though...
 
Porcelain interior

Did GE ever make a porcelain tub machine the 70s? I know the ones they did had a Hotpoint name on them, but it was not until the mid 80s that GE started putting their name on Hotpoint machines. Of course, I could be wrong on that one.
 
Funnily enough, the Canadian-made GE dishwashers had porcelain tubs right into the late 1980s.  My folks had a 1978 GE Contessa portable and my first house had a 1988 GE Potscrubber II, both of which had porcelain tubs.   I have a feeling that the Canadian models were all based on the Hotpoint design (store brands Beaumark, and the 80s Vikings had porcelain tubs and were definitely Hotpoint-style machines). 
 
GE with Porcelain tub

I purchased a GE portable dishwasher having a white/light gray porcelain tub in 1983 that had 4 cycles and energy saving feature for heated dry (two other buttons).
 
When I was a kid our house had an oooold GE with the fat steel wash arm and Plastisol interior. I remember my dad fixing several rust spots inside the sump with some kind of white epoxy. That was in the late 80s when the machine was already 10 years old.
That machine lasted until we moved in 1996!
Other than being LOUD and rickety. That thing ran alllll those years.

It looked like this:
No features. Heat dry on or off.
Dial Normal wash, short wash and rinse hold.
But it had wood door inserts.

johnb300m-2016032311214409045_1.png
 
Ha!
I only remember part of it was GSD500.
The house was built in 1978.
So the dw could've been a 1978 or earlier, really. Depending on how builders stockpile things.
 
Knock on wood

If Plastisol interior of dw is repaired promptly and well things generally tend to hold. My efforts on the Mobile Maid have served well going on over one year.

Of course the thing is to prevent tears and nicks in that lining from the start. This requires caution when loading/unloading anything with sharp edges like knives, forks, etc....
 
Think if you examine closely

Much of the damage to Plastisol liners show the tell tale marks of cutlery. Slashes, gashes, that sort of thing.

Thank heaven today we have epoxies that are streets ahead of what was available then. JB Weld products are a godsend. Also think today's much less aggressive dishwasher detergents (formulated without heavy dosages of chlorine bleach) are easier on that plastic interior.
 
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.
 

Similar threads

Chetlaham
GE/Hotpoint Cycle Time
Replies
6
Views
269
Chetlaham
Chetlaham
Chetlaham
GE Semi Solid Tub Washer
Replies
25
Views
447
Chetlaham
Chetlaham
Chetlaham
Whirlpool Dishwahser Heaters
Replies
11
Views
248
Chetlaham
Chetlaham
turquoisedude
Holiday brand dishwasher - what the ???
Replies
9
Views
166
turquoisedude
turquoisedude
D
Conundrum, What would you do?
Replies
4
Views
134
tomturbomatic
T

Latest posts

Back
Top