Maytag A806 very hard on clothing

[floyde]

I am the proud owner of a Maytag A806 from 1979 that Kevin helped me get last Spring.

I've noticed that that I'm getting holes in underwear and today an expensive pillowcase less then a year old is shredded at the ends. I don't use chlorine bleach so it's not from that. Also t-shirts (tank style) are getting wider and wider.

Has anyone else seen excessive wear on these clothes from the agitator?

I thought these machines were supposed to be relatively gentle.

Any comment from you Maytag lovers are appreciated.

 

[yogitunes]

even if you overloaded, these machines would 'give in' to the load to save wear on the machine....

pull the agitator, and check for any sort of hangnail sticking out that may be snagging on clothing, as well as the inner tub.....

just uncommon for this type of machine....

 

[hippiedoll]

just a suggestion here...

I'm no expert here but,
could it be that you aren't filling the machine with enough water??

One mistake I made when I was washing a set of delicate curtains was I filled the machine to a medium sized load (because that's where the curtains reached on the agitator) and I set the washer on "DELICATE", thinking this was how I was supposed to use the "SLOW" speed to wash. Well my curtains came out partly shredded.
But come to find out, when you use the "DELICATE/GENTLE" cycle, you're supposed to use the "EXTRA LARGE" load water level to get the true "GENTLE" washing action.

Is this what you're doing too??

 

[wayupnorth]

I wonder if the agitator was damaged somehow and there may be sort of a shredding of the vanes that could catch and damage clothes. I saw that happen before and once the agitator was sanded down smooth in those rough places, the problem went away.

 

[nmassman44]

Here's my two cents....I would check the agitator to see if you have any rough areas on the wash vanes. That can happen when one doesn't close zippers and they get down to the base of the agitator and it roughs up the edges of the vanes. Next I would look at loading. With a Maytag washer one drops the clothes in loosely and only loads to the top row of holes for a full load. Do not pack or wrap the clothes around the agitator.
I have had Maytag washers in the past...an A510, A613 and an LAT 9356 and with all those machines, never had an issue like this happening to laundry. I also never overloaded those machines either and always got great results.

 

[floyde]

yes loading it proper

Well, I checked originally and went over the agitator again and it's as smooth as a baby's bottom. This machine got very little use from what I understand. It came from a house in Palm Springs and for all the years was only used a couple months out of the year.

I'm very careful about closing zippers and button on clothing . I have never even used the extra large load selector, as I always under load it if anything. This was a bottom sheet and 5 pillow cases. One pillow case came out in really bad shape. As I said it was a thicker pillow case more like a shame and it just shredded the edge where it is sewn to overlap the case.

The items where placed in quarter sections and not wrapped around the agitator.

I had it serviced when I got it with new belts, could it be that the agitator
is moving too many fast? I don't know if there is any any adjustment you can make.

With only a 10 minute wash it seems that this wouldn't happen.

 

[norgeway]

A Maytag

Usually is too gentle if anything,I always thought their action was slow.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I am sorry for your fabric damage

Maytags' action might be slow, but they can be rough on clothing because they have very aggressive agitator action at the bottom of the tub, even with the Power Fin agitator, and, unless underloaded with fabrics and filled with water, don't have the greatest turnover. Sometime in the late 60s or early 70s, CU tested single speed washers with casement weave curtains, sorta net looking things, and they had a picture of how the Maytag had distorted and pulled snags in the piece washed in it.

When John worked at Lanham Maytag, he washed his work clothes in his Kenmore combo while Bill and Bob's wives washed their shirts in their Maytags. John's shirts lasted a lot longer, which they probably would have anyway in a front loader, but the Maytags did put some serious wear on things.

Have you checked the tub for any rough places since you know that the agitator is smooth?

 

[norgeway]

That makes sense..

The clothes at the bottom are drug back and forth while the ones on top just set there...

 

[floyde]

Only thing different

I used Borax and wanted it well resolved so I added the clothes after agitation began. It wasn't agitating while I was adding clothes though.

So does it do better on more water and less clothes or just an average load with right amount of water?

Usually I have what I would consider more water in the tub than the ratio of clothes in the tub.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

I heard about some agitator configurations not being good to some kind of clothes, like catching and pulling in the fins, maytag fins might do that to some thin fibers and yes like large net fibers as fins are not attached to the base but are flexible to some extent, though that is something that usually happens as you overload and or underfill it..and not so likely.
Said this I always heard about maytags as well designed in this sense... pretty gentle yet effective.
The sort of damage you describe sounds more like a rough tub damage than agitator, especially if you have checked it, not much about the holes but what makes me think it's rather the ends of clothes you mention which if I have understand are chewed and "grated", these are usually the tails, collars and endings or high ground sewing that are the most rigid parts on the clothes and the ones that would swish against the tub with a greater "resistance" than the softer more flixible parts (not sure if resistance is the right word to use here).
I recall I've read something on a guy who tried to descale and remove rust on the machine with some kind of acid product, the guy filled it put the acid and let it sit overnight, while the acid cleaned the tub and the outter tub very well he claimed that after that his machine has never been the same and actually started to give the same kind of damage you describe, it turns out that the kind of acid he used was hydrofluoric acid which is a common rust remover ingredient, and that kind of roughened up the porcelain that is worked and meant to be smooth and not create friction with the clothes..
Porcelain, especially the one used in washing machines will stand and resist many acids, but if there is one acid that porcelain will not tolerate it's right the hydrofluoric.
So I would compare your tub to the one of another similar Maytag if you have a chance, they usually are very shiney, if it's dull then maybe that's the problem..some previous owner may have done the same thing...

[this post was last edited: 3/26/2015-19:41]

 

[whirlykenmore78]

MT Powerfin wash action is deceiveing:

It appears very gentle on the top of the drum as there are no fins on the agitator post. However the turbulence at the bottom of the drum is extremely powerful despite the slow agitation. While many may not believe it these machinse are more likely to shred clothes than a DD Whirlpool.
Combine the fact that the base fins had to do all of the work in these machines and because of this the turnover was very slow resulting in clothes spending too much time in the Robot-Coupe zone it only makes sense that things would get shredded.WK78

 

[kenmoreguy89]

Also....

They never gave me the impression of being slow, as you have to imagine what happens under not judge by what you see above, and I see a good wash action down there.
The fact is that these are machine to use with clothes put really freely and with high water level in order to gurantee proper turnover.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Traditionally, Maytag washers had fewer oscillations per minute than, for example, WP machines until the advent of the DD and Orbital machines. The machines with the Power Fin agitators used a slightly increased agitation speed over the older machines with the Bakelite agitators.

 

[d-jones]

Since everyone is baggin' on Maytag's I'll throw in my 2 cents(that's all I can afford). My parents have been using the A806 that I went through for them since July 2012 and they've never had even the smallest issue with it. It seems to do an excellent job and the few times I've stood there and watched it work the turnover during agitation is strong. Last year we took down a bunch of white lace curtains from the windows upstairs and down at my parents house(all told more than a dozen sets) and washed them on the gentle cycle. These curtains are decades old and half of them hang in direct sunlight, so they should be a bit on the delicate side, yet they emerged from the wash clean and undamaged. Obviously it'd be foolish of me to argue with those who claim to have had a different experience and call them liars, but I can say that I haven't seen the problems being described. (knock on wood) I'm very happy with my old Maytag.

 

[washerlover]

Wow, I am surprised to hear that a Maytag would do something like that. Being a Norge/Wards fan and owner, given their vigorous and rapid agitation, have never had anything torn apart or shredded. And the Maytags I have owned and still own have never given me trouble in that area. As stated in the previous posts, Maytags are one of the more gentle machines I have experienced. Please keep us posted..!

 

[norgeway]

If you want to see

Something hard on clothes, get a 20 pound tub Norge!!!!It is great for nasty work clothes, but boy does it really wash!

 

[combo52]

Maytag Washer Agitation

It is well documented that MT washers can be fairly hard on clothing compared to most other brands of washers built during the same time period.  That said they can be successfully used without destroying your wardrobe, as millions of owners have proved.

 

But the fact remains that MT Automatics always had problems with fabric damage complaints from the very first automatics built, [ I worked for A MT Home Appliance store in the early 70s and our MT rep shared a lot of letters that MT got from consumers about clothing damage, it was a constant problem for MT when consumers switched to MT washers ] the agitator was simply too big for their small diameter tubs, this coupled with the long stroke and squared off fins was not a good design. MTs orignal agitator was designed for a square wringer washer tub and it worked quite well in this application.

 

MT never had a decent agitator in an automatic washer [ that they designed and built ] till they came out with the Load Sensor Agitator in the last helical drive machines.

 

Yes even a Norge 20LB washer washing along at high speed will not do the damage that a Power-Finn MT agitator will do to a load of clothing, Consumer Reports proved this years ago.

 

[yogitunes]

your talking normal speed and pulley of a regular Maytag......

with the help of Ben, mine is turbocharged, one speed, and have yet to see any fabric damage...and mind you this agitation is kicked up....

there can be a wide range of variables that can cause issues of fabric damage...