“If you were a laundry engineer, what changes would you make to any of these three designs to have made them run longer”
Good question! Since I’ve taken my Whirlpool apart at least a dozen times since I’ve owned it and made some observations, what I would have changed about the belt drive design is beef up the spin tube assembly, use ball bearings or needle bearings in place of the sleeve bearings, add a front access panel, use some sort of inverter motor (similar to the one Robert put on the one Maytag and GE Filter Flo awhile back) for various degrees of agitation. If you had one of those inverter motors with today’s technology and programming, could have it engage the spin solenoid and have it ‘sense’ the load to determine how much water to use etc. Put a drain plug on the transmission to drain contaminated oil or oil that’s thickened with age. Make the outer tub out of plastic so there’s no issues with rust.
For Maytag, can’t think of much other than beefing it up and making certain things a little more accessible.
For the GE Filter Flo design, maybe design it like a Maytag so it doesn’t have a small inner tub and large outer tub which uses lots of water and the performance isn’t any better as a Whirlpool or Maytag is.