GM/Frigidaire Impeller Dishwasher Find

[bwoods]

This came in today at the Habitat ReStore where I volunteer. Brought it home to clean it up a little and try it out.

Plugged it in out on the patio and put some water in with the garden hose.
The main motor and pump motor both run well. The main motor's bearing is good. I can twairl the impeller with one finger and it coasts a little after being turned off.

If there was a safety interlock on the lid, it is either non-functional or someone removed it. The main motor keeps running with the lid open.

Does anyone know the age? Maybe late 1950's?

The model is: DW-STB Serial: 67ED490

 

[bwoods]

Timer

I did not have the time to let it run through it's cycle, so I don't know if the timer progresses. Will check that later

It looks as if there is one main wash and two rinses.

 

[bwoods]

Inside

I wiped it out. Tub has no rust throughs. Hopefully running some CLR through it will take some of the rust and calcium deposits off.

 

[bwoods]

Good racks

No visible rust on the racks, that I could see.

 

[bwoods]

Top Rack

The upper rack has a neat feature in that the two center pieces swing open to allow access to the lower rack.

 

[bwoods]

silverware basket

Don't know if this is the original basket. If so, it must be missing the hangars that I assume would have supported it in the missle space in the upper rack.

 

[bwoods]

innards

I vacuumed the cobwebs off the guts. Noticed no leaks while it was operating. Terribly noisy. Makes the Maytag Reverse Rack sound like a distant whisper. You could actually see the tremors/vibrations of the machine and the water hit the tub.

The lid is a single layer of sheet metal with a porcelain coating. Does nothing to muffle the sound.

 

[bwoods]

another view

hefty motor. The total amps for the machine is listed as 12.0

 

[bwoods]

Unicoupler

Unfortunately, I do not have the male fitting, that goes on the kitchen faucet, to snap into the unicoupling. Anyone have a spare laying around??

 

[pdub]

You can still buy that unicouple faucet adapter at any hardware or appliance parts store. There are two sizes sold and it should be the larger size of the two.

What a cool find. It appears to have the Frigidaire logo of the early 60's so I'm betting the machine was made about 61 or 62. PhilR will probably know.

Looking forward to more pictures of the machine all cleaned up.

Patrick

 

[alr2903]

Bwoods thanks for posting the pictures.  I have never seen this one.  A frigidaire impeller. How cool is that? Best of Luck with it. alr

 

[tomturbomatic]

That silver basket sits along the side of the tub on the lower rack.

 

[turquoisedude]

Great find! Imagine GM letting D&M make a dishwasher for them....

Philr actually has a dishwasher like this one - I think you'll enjoy it. Congratulations on this save!!

 

[bwoods]

comments

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Thanks for the tip on getting the adaptor for the unicoupler, Patrick.

I'll be returning the dishwasher to Habitat for resale, but I've got clean the inside up a little. And of course, I've got to run a load of dirty dishes through it first to see what it can do! Never had an impeller machine before.

 

[volvoguy87]

Classiccaprice!

I believe Classiccaprice has a version of this.

Dave

 

[bwoods]

price?

Anyone have any thoughts on the price Habitat should put on it? They were thinking between $100 -150.

BTW, as items come into our store that I feel all of you may be interested in, I'll post them on AW.

The nice Tappan Fabulous 400 range that they had and I posted on AW sold. We don't get too many vintage items, but every now and then something good comes along.

 

[philr]

It's slightly older but still similar to mine (mine is a 1965 DW STJ). Yours is an early 1960s model (1960-61 I think). 

 

 

[classiccaprice]

Looks familiar

I paid $100 for my 1955 D&M Kenmore and it was completely restored. I know they also made these for Westinghouse. I love mine, even if the gasket does leak slightly! As with anything, it is worth what someone is willing to pay. Good luck and I hope it finds a good home!

http://www.automaticwasher.org/cgi-bin/TD/TD-VIEWTHREAD.cgi?44840

 

[classiccaprice]

And yes, it is a very loud machine to run. That is normal.

 

[rinso]

Like most impeller machines, they do a good job is you rinse the dishes off before loading. We had the 1959 version of this and the glasses always came out spotless.

 

[bwoods]

tub clean-up

Ran some of "The Works" toilet bowl cleaner through the machine to try and get rid of calcium and rust staining. Most (but not all came off.)

 

[bwoods]

first load, bottom rack

First time I have ever tried an impeller machine, so I
scraped most of the solids off. Not exactly a "Bob Load".

 

[bwoods]

upper rack

more room than I expected and was able to get the popcorn popper top in.

 

[bwoods]

and the final results - lower rack

Not bad results, if you look closely at that bowl on the lower right, you can see some redposition of a piece of cat food on the outside of the bowl.

 

[bwoods]

and the upper rack

Fairly good, but not perfect, results also. You can tell very well from the picture, but a film was left on the tall glass in the corner which had the dried remains of a smoothie. But the other glasses and the corn popper container/lid were nice and clean. The inside of of both orange plastic glasses had a few very small cat food nibbles in them.

 

[appnut]

orange plastic glasses

Back when these machines were quite the norm, many families I knew had melmac and melamine dishes. Plastic just tended to hold onto food soils far more than glass surfaces. And since so many people had such amounts of plastic dishes, they pretty much got disgusted and rinsed everything. Very very fine job of loading there!! I'll certify it as BobLoad just because you managed to fill that thing up all the way.

 

[bwoods]

the rejects

a closer view of the food remnants.

If I had scraped a little better, these would not be there. Overall, the results were better than I expected from a bakelite/plastic impeller dishwasher with only three water changes. It seems to me this machine was a little outdated technology wise for 1960/61.

The dishwasher has one short wash and two very short, almost flash, rinses. I didn't time them but the wash wash probably in the neighborhood of ten minuntes and the rinses maybe a coupleof minutes each. It did take a purge before and after the main wash. I think this helped as it the first purge made sure the water entering the machine was hot and the second purged helped to flush any residual food remnants down the drain.

Considering only three water changes and a very short cycle, I think the machine did quite well.

If D&M had two washes, like the Hotpoint impeller machine that Harriet Nelson (of "Ozzie and Harriet") advertised on tv, I suspect I would have had near perfect results.

Anyone have one of those Hotpoints??

BTW, anyone know how many water changes the General Electric "bowtie" impeller machine have?

If anyone is interested in this machine, I am going to take it back to Habitat next week. You might make them an offer for it. A nice coat of epoxy paint on the outside, and some detailing work on the control panel/knob and she would look pretty good.

 

[bwoods]

thanks-

Thanks for the BobLoad certification, Bob!

 

[appnut]

GE "bowtie"

Prewash, rinse, main wash, 3 after rinses.

 

[tomturbomatic]

The GE bow tie had a far larger capacity, especially in the top rack than the Frigidaire model here. If you position the silver basket along the wall in the lower rack where the owner's manual states it belongs, you could have placed the knives in it, making extra space in the small upper rack. This machine was one of those that CU stated needed more preparation prior to loading. One reason that the GE handled food waste better was because it did not have a separate drain pump. It used the main pump to drain the machine which was capable of grinding the food into fine particles instead of having it have to pass through the holes in the strainer over the drain pump opening. When food sat there after the wash drain, it was able to be thrown around in the two rinses.

One thing I see that is missing from this Frigidaire is the wash-through detergent dispenser. It hung from the crossbar between the two sections of the upper rack at the back of the machine. How did you add detergent so as to keep it from being washed away during the pre-wash purge? Most types of modern packaged portion-controlled detergent are not formulated for the short wash period of this machine.

As for the Hotoint dishwashers of the early 50s, they had a metal filter ring around the impeller. It had fine holes in the upper portion of the ring to keep food particles from being recirculated while the impeller was spinning. At the bottom, there were larger holes so that when the impeller stopped and the drain began, the heavier particles could pass through the larger holes to move toward the drain opening, at least in theory. From the models I have seen, the fine screen caught stuff, but was not self-cleaning. It probably also served to protect the vulnerable leading edges of the Bakelite impeller. Speaking of Bakelite impellers, what is the one condition of the leading edges on the impeller in the Frigidaire?