Madam, I like the white one, but do you have something more colorful?

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Now this is interesting, the White machine has a Pink Tub Ring and the Turquoise machine has Gray Tub Ring??? If you look closely at the picture on the wall hanging above the White 58 GE, it’s an advertisement for this machine but in Pink. It too has the Gray Tub Ring???

I wonder if the Pink Tub ring was only available for the White machines or if the Pink Tub ring was a mid-production change????? Maybe something else, I have no idea. It sure is interesting to wonder about though.

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Hi Robert,
Congratulations on your beautiful turquoise GE Filter Flo.
I wish you good health and many happy lint free wash loads.

All the best.
Hugh
 
Robert, what can I say, another treasure saved. Details please. It is just beautiful. Terry
 
Cool, Robert! Are you going to keep the white one for parts or try and keep both machines up & running? I like the grey/ pink agitator top on the white machine better than the black one on the turquoise. Maybe soon a 57 filterflo will surface and you can match up your 57 dryer. I thought it was interesting that GE put the timer knob on the left side for that one year.
Les
 
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.
 
Hi Robert,
I look forwaard to seeing the restoration pictures, I love to see the workings of these great American Top Loaders.
Happy restoring.

All the best.
Hugh
 
Robert, very interesting about the anti-indexing pawl. That's what went out in my mom's 59. The tub would spin so fast during agitation that the activator made hardly any contact with the water & clothes. I definitely like the original style filter mount. The post 1960 mount just looks so wrong on these machines. Our old 59 had the aqua-turquoise colored mount, same shape as the grey one on your white 58.
 
Oh boy, Robert ... THAT'S BEAUTIFUL!! What a great color!

Thanks for the obligatory interior shot; those are always so fun to look at!!! :-)

Your white one is a quiet machine (if I remember right ... or were there so many running at once that I couldn't hear!!).
 

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