Interesting tidbit on SQ faciliy in Omro Wisc

[washman]

History
The Speed Queen facility in Omro was built
in the 1950s for the manufacture of aluminum
die-cast parts of washing machines. The site
consisted of several buildings: a 13,500 square
foot die-cast building— which housed the
original die-cast machine, melting furnaces and
offices—, a 25,000 square foot addition, and a
4,500 square foot storage garage.

In 1979, Raytheon Commercial Laundry
purchased Speed Queen and continued to
operate the facility until 1998. In 1998,
Raytheon sold the business to Alliance
Laundry, but retained ownership of the
vacant Omro property due to on-going site
investigations.

Basically the thrust of the article is about a brownfield cleanup but I thought it was interesting to learn a bit more about SQ manufacturing history.

 

[rp2813]

I wonder how long it took Alliance to remove all of the despised Raytheon cooties from SQ washers and dryers.

 

I'd not hesitate to buy a used SQ if it was made after Alliance started building them (and their belts) to last, but I don't know what year of manufacture that would go back to.

 

[whirlcool]

I think any SQ built after 2001 would be a safe bet.

 

[combo52]

Speed Queen TL Washers

Still have belt problems, I just replaced one in warranty after just 15 months of home use for a family of four [ this washer was also having a problem with the idler binding so this greatly hastened the belt failure ]. But any way you cut it the belt design is a highly stressed design, unlike even MT [ who always had plenty of belt problems ] the SQ belt is shorter, it has an idler pulley that bends the belt backwards, the main drive pulley is smaller than MTs and is plastic [ does not dissipate heat like MTs much larger alluvium pulley does ] and the motor pulley is also smaller than MTs and therefore has less mass. This all adds up to a very hot running belt and they can have fairly short lives. The belt is also much harder to change than MTs main drive belt.

Help is on the way, when SQ changes to a poly-vee belt and a neutral drain with a variable speed motor for faster spin speeds and lower power consumption these problem will go away, Yay.