Laundromat in Westchester NY

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reversajet

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Sep 24, 2006
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Location
Westchester, NY
Just as I was leaving this "digger" of a 1920s home, in the garage was this undercounter model washer, sale run by Patrick of Tin Sign Antiques. Pix show front, dial and tub, base cover present, rubber tub gasket pliable, not cracked. Give Pat a call at (201) 316-6077, street level, located off Hutchinson Pkwy, Yonkers border. Dolly avail, hoping to remove within 2 weeks. Marked $75.

reversajet++3-8-2014-12-02-1.jpg
 
Westinghouse L-4 Clothes Washer

Cleaning ability of these early WH Slant Front washers [ with slanted tubs, - 1958 ] was usually rated only fair to poor in cleaning ability. they were not a good choice if their was a auto mechanic in the family, and they sometimes made women wish they had there wringer washer back for really dirty clothing.

The poor performance, tangling, cleaning, is one of the reasons that we have seen so many of these early SF WHs show up over the years that are not completely worn out, people would set them aside when they had enough money to buy something that worked better. Much the same thing happened with the early bolt-down Bendix washers and also with Frigidaire Uni-Matics, even thought these are all fun machines many owners just got tired of the short comings.
 
Thanks Combo!

From one's early days of interest in laundry appliances kind of gleaned that the poor performance of early front loaders gave them a bad name. This helped cement the dominance of top loaders with central beaters.

Shame that unlike across the pond American manufacturers of washing machines didn't really put more R&D into domestic H-Axis washers. Know the problems with Bendix and their patents, but still Miele and countless other European manufacturers made things work.
 
Sylvania with Halo light

We had one of those. The lens around the screen would light up , supposedly to make the screen have better contrast? I don't know what it was supposed to do, exactly, but my dad hated the feature and we never used it.
 
Yeh, nothing like trying to look at something through glare from the same something. Set the brand apart in ad copy, less so in use.

We had SF Westys for a family of 6, they were very busy and very reliable. Wouldn't rate our soil level as 'challenging' though. Infant socks could find their way into the pump but easily removed without tools or damage. That and resetting the snubbers were the first appliance repairs I learned, around age 9.
 
Westinghouse L-4 Clothes Washer

Rick brings up a good point, these early to mid 1950s SF WH washers were among the most reliable of all early automatic washers according to CRs early readers surveys that they reported on in the late 50s. Unfortunately once WH cheapened the machine and lost the Sealed-In-Steel transmission around 1956-7 in favor of the three belt drive system the machines started to lose their reliability advantage. Many other brands also started to improve, Maytag for example didn't really get the kinks out of the Helical Drive washers till the early 1960s.

But poor old WH never built an AW or dryer again that set any reliability records, but rather records for among the worst in reliability. Ironically one of the worst things about WH home laundry appliances were the WH built motors they used and once WCI bough WH they immediately started to use GE and Emerson motors and things got better for a while.
 

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