Hi everyone and thanks. Here are the details so far, the new turquoise machine has two main problems. The first is a broken fill inlet water flume hose which I suspect made for quite a flood which probably took the machine out of service years ago. The second is not so obvious to a common user, but the anti-indexing pawl has broken and causes the tub to rotate during agitation about 45 to 50 rpm. This speed is fast is enough to throw some of the water over the top of the tub, but since it’s a Filter-Flo GE, the water is brought back into the tub, but still a spinning wash tub cuts out a lot of wash action. The other issue is the pump is not pumping the Filter-flo water stream fast enough to get it all in the filter pan, the rubber diverter flap in the pump is worn, but I have a few of those rubber flappers in stock so that’s and easy fix.
The biggest challenge will be the transmission. 99% of that transmission is made out of metal, but for some strange reason GE decided to make the anti-indexing pawl out of plastic. Every GE washer I have ever seen made from 1955 thru 1959 had the same problem of a broken pawl and the tub turning during wash. In 1960 when they changed to the KER-Clunking brake transmission the pawl was eliminated as the brake now prevented the tub from turning during the wash and it worked really well. The earlier GE models with the double pulley (like my really old 1951 GE to the right of the white ’58 GE) had the anti-index pawl on the outside of the tranny and it was made of rubber and also worked really well. It was really just a problem with the 55-59 GE’s. When I was at the Aberdeen Appliance Graveyard five years ago I stripped a few GE washers from that time period and saved the transmissions. I was able to take a 1960 Brake transmission and use it in my White 58 GE so that machine works great.
So here’s the deal, if I can find one of the farm transmissions, that I saved, has a good pawl and works fine, I will be able to save both washers. If I cannot, I will take the best parts and make one good Turquoise machine. I hope I can save both and find the white machine a good home, but I really don’t know. We will see.
Both white and turquoise machines originally came with a Pink Filter Mount and copper filter pan. The White machine has a replacement gray filter mount that I put on there last year and a copper pan. At some point in the life of the Turquoise machine the filter mount was changed to a black modern mount which takes the later style GE Filter-pans used from 1960-1995.
As for the pink dispenser in the front-left hand corner that’s a one-shot fabric softener dispenser which I love. It uses the incoming rinse water to flow thru the dispenser to overflow the softener into the wash basket. Before you fill the dispenser you need to press the pink button to drain the dispenser tray of clear rinse water before you fill it for the next wash.
I’ll start taking this machine apart tonight and I will take some restoration pictures for all to see. I bet some Appliancevillers’ who have worked on later perforated tub GE’s will find the solid basket machines similar but with some major differences.