O-Kay.
Brandon:
There are two brands to keep in mind if you want to go vintage and want relative ease of repair when things go wrong. They are: 1) Maytag and 2) Whirlpool/Sears. Each of these brands have their fans and detractors, and I will go ahead and put my biases on the table by saying I'm in the Maytag camp. Whirlpool and Sears (Kenmore) are lumped together because Whirlpool made Sears for decades and the two brands are sisters under the skin.
There are other brands that many people here love, but I'm assuming you want something easy to find, as robust as possible and as easy to fix as possible. The reason I like Maytag is that even I understand what's going on under the hood; I'm mechanically inclined up to a point, but not to the extent others are. Parts are still reasonably easy to find for the classic top-loaders, and you can perform many repairs yourself using common sense and common tools.
Maytags came in many models, at a lot of different price points. The top of the line for many years was the A806, with all the bells and whistles. Lesser machines were still very well-featured; I once owned a near-bottom-of-the-line A208 that had almost every feature my present A806 has. The engineering was very similar no matter what Maytag you bought, and the quality was the same no matter what.
You do need to understand one thing about what you're getting into: You will need to learn to do simple maintenance and repair yourself, and you need to have a network of friends who can help with more complicated stuff. This site's members can help with the first, and if you're nice to them, will turn into the second. The reason you need to become at least partly self-sufficient is that most repair places will not work on vintage stuff; the parts aren't on their shelf, there's no factory-paid warranty work to make easy money on and they usually don't have the know-how, since their technicians are often young guys who trained on newer stuff.
Used Maytag washers are all over most cities' Craigslist for $100 or less. Members here can tell you about how to judge one for sale. Or if you're the risk-taking type, you might just take a chance on one without knowing too much about it - the Almond pair of top-of-the-line 806s below began as free machines with an unknown history. I have all of $100 invested in repairs, and they run perfectly, as they have for over three years since I got them back in shape.
Welcome to AW.org![this post was last edited: 12/5/2013-20:02]
Maybe even install "mop rag green" carpet too. Woot.
Yes, I'm mechanically inclined to a point also. As for parts hang in there folks asI see a time not so far in with 3D printing that will allow us to make parts. That's going to be sweet.
