everythingold
Well-known member
I love these and a direct drive! This is going into my partner Scott's new house. He had one growing up. Not tested it yet.
Maytag RR DD dishwasher
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whitetub
Well-known member
Great dishwasher. Post some pics when installed, cleaned up,and fully loaded.
brib68
Well-known member
Our family had one of these for our first-ever dishwasher. It was a white convertible-portable and a little higher trim. It had 5 option buttons, a group of two and a group of three--no recollection what they selected, but my guess is the group of two probably chose heat dry or air dry.
That machine lasted a long time. I think mom bought it in 1979 or 1980, and they moved it to the 'new' house where they converted it to a built-in. It lasted there until the mid 2000s. They replaced it with a Kenmore, which was replaced a few years later with a stainless steel KA when mom remodeled the kitchen.
The Maytag was noisy, but always gave great results.
That machine lasted a long time. I think mom bought it in 1979 or 1980, and they moved it to the 'new' house where they converted it to a built-in. It lasted there until the mid 2000s. They replaced it with a Kenmore, which was replaced a few years later with a stainless steel KA when mom remodeled the kitchen.
The Maytag was noisy, but always gave great results.
My parents had one of those in the house that they use to live in. You could always here those wash arms spinning round in that machine. They certainly weren't slow moving. When it pumped out the water it would somehwat sound like a jet with the noise it made. Did a good job of cleaning.
Some of the earlier model Maytags were belt driven. The motor was in the front right and a belt connected to the pump pulley.
These are great machines! They have their own rhythm in dishwasher life.
I have never seen a pump clogged in one of these machines, no matter how many years of use.
You really need to become a big fan of the Maytag Loading of this period. Other than that...
you have an amazing machine. It will not let you down!
I have never seen a pump clogged in one of these machines, no matter how many years of use.
You really need to become a big fan of the Maytag Loading of this period. Other than that...
you have an amazing machine. It will not let you down!
direct drive
Direct drive is what most home dishwasher are, with the the pump being directly connected to the motor. The earlier Maytag RR, as Andrew said, had the motor off to the side and connect by a belt to the pump. Maytag did this to increase the tub size, since you didn't have to allow for the height of the motor underneath the center of the tub.
As newer more compact motors were developed, they were able to go with the conventional design with center mounted motor with no loss in tub space. The later models of the RR are all of the DD design.
have had both. I really like the belt drive but it seems to transmit a little more vibration to the dishwasher frame, to which the motor is mounted. On the belt drive models I can feel a little more vibration through the floor in proximity to the machine.
The Maytags are the most intuitive machine to load that I have ever had. You just look at the racks and instantly recognize what goes where. Maytag attacked the conventional paradigm that plates must go in the bottom rack.
My two favorite things are it holds more bowls than any machine I have had. There are ten dedicated bowl spaces, but you can also put bowls in the saucer racks if you have more, because with the fine holed high velocity water jets they wash just great even though they are more closely spaced.
The other cool feature is that you have a full sized spray arm at the top of the machine washing down. So pots and pans in the upper rack, get their bottoms scrubbed with a full sized wash arm. Which is useful if you have a spill over. The upper rack is deep and I can get a full sized roaster in it. I wash my electric skillet in the upper rack and it takes all the accumulated grease of the underside of the skillet.
The downside is you do not have a quiet machine here. Personally, I like the sound of raw unbridled power, ha. It's not so loud you can't have a conversation next to it, but on the otherhand there is no doubt you are doing dishes.
The BOL machines do not have an extended wash time, nor thermostatic hold, so you do need to make sure your entering water temp. is sufficient. I prefer the models with the extended wash as they scrub the bejeebers out of dirty pots and pans. The BOL machines do extremely, almost unbelievably, well for a limited main wash time, which I believe is 10 - 12 minutes, on eaveryday dish loads. But it can't fully compete with the extended wash time, which are about three times longer on the higher up models, when you have really crusty pots and pans.
By the way, Matt, when Scott is cleaning it up, be sure tht the filter is totally clean, and clean with CLR of Lime-Away if there is any calcium built-up. Also, check each of the small jet holes in the lower and upper wash arms, as well as the holes on the backwash jets behind the filter, for the same reason.
When reinserting the filter, make sure that the filter is securely placed into the grooves at the top and bottom so food wastes cannot bypass it. The washarm jets are so small, it doesn't take much to clog one.
[this post was last edited: 10/9/2014-11:32]
Direct drive is what most home dishwasher are, with the the pump being directly connected to the motor. The earlier Maytag RR, as Andrew said, had the motor off to the side and connect by a belt to the pump. Maytag did this to increase the tub size, since you didn't have to allow for the height of the motor underneath the center of the tub.
As newer more compact motors were developed, they were able to go with the conventional design with center mounted motor with no loss in tub space. The later models of the RR are all of the DD design.
have had both. I really like the belt drive but it seems to transmit a little more vibration to the dishwasher frame, to which the motor is mounted. On the belt drive models I can feel a little more vibration through the floor in proximity to the machine.
The Maytags are the most intuitive machine to load that I have ever had. You just look at the racks and instantly recognize what goes where. Maytag attacked the conventional paradigm that plates must go in the bottom rack.
My two favorite things are it holds more bowls than any machine I have had. There are ten dedicated bowl spaces, but you can also put bowls in the saucer racks if you have more, because with the fine holed high velocity water jets they wash just great even though they are more closely spaced.
The other cool feature is that you have a full sized spray arm at the top of the machine washing down. So pots and pans in the upper rack, get their bottoms scrubbed with a full sized wash arm. Which is useful if you have a spill over. The upper rack is deep and I can get a full sized roaster in it. I wash my electric skillet in the upper rack and it takes all the accumulated grease of the underside of the skillet.
The downside is you do not have a quiet machine here. Personally, I like the sound of raw unbridled power, ha. It's not so loud you can't have a conversation next to it, but on the otherhand there is no doubt you are doing dishes.
The BOL machines do not have an extended wash time, nor thermostatic hold, so you do need to make sure your entering water temp. is sufficient. I prefer the models with the extended wash as they scrub the bejeebers out of dirty pots and pans. The BOL machines do extremely, almost unbelievably, well for a limited main wash time, which I believe is 10 - 12 minutes, on eaveryday dish loads. But it can't fully compete with the extended wash time, which are about three times longer on the higher up models, when you have really crusty pots and pans.
By the way, Matt, when Scott is cleaning it up, be sure tht the filter is totally clean, and clean with CLR of Lime-Away if there is any calcium built-up. Also, check each of the small jet holes in the lower and upper wash arms, as well as the holes on the backwash jets behind the filter, for the same reason.
When reinserting the filter, make sure that the filter is securely placed into the grooves at the top and bottom so food wastes cannot bypass it. The washarm jets are so small, it doesn't take much to clog one.
[this post was last edited: 10/9/2014-11:32]
My grandparents had a Maytag JetClean RR for a long time, since before I was born. About 5 years ago they gave it to their daughter, my aunt Monica, in place of a WP built Kenmore stainless steel tall tub. My aunt and her brood promptly killed it within months, as they do with most things. A huge pity, and I still get on to granddad for letting it go.
I can't remember the year model, but I know it has to be early eighties. It was an 8 button electronic control board, but the cosmetics and design were identical to the one pictured above minus the timer knob. For a while it was the only dishwasher I had ever seen with electronic buttons and LED lights, and I loved that it showed the Wash-Rinse-Dry indicators. That thing never left a speck of anything after a cycle, and the best part was during the forced-air heated dry, where steam would billow out of the vent. I thought it was the coolest machine in the world, right along with their Lady Kenmore Solid State of course.
Later, as I became more adept at repair and disassembly of things, I would take the pump assembly apart and clean the scale and gunk from the crevices of the filter and the arm assemblies. My grandparents live where the water comes from a spring, so their water is horrendously hard. It got to a point where once a week granddad would have to take the arms out and clean the scale buildup out of the spray holes with a toothpick. If not for that, they would still surely have that machine and it would have been saved from my aunt, uncle, and cousin's wrathful terror on everything they touch.
I can't remember the year model, but I know it has to be early eighties. It was an 8 button electronic control board, but the cosmetics and design were identical to the one pictured above minus the timer knob. For a while it was the only dishwasher I had ever seen with electronic buttons and LED lights, and I loved that it showed the Wash-Rinse-Dry indicators. That thing never left a speck of anything after a cycle, and the best part was during the forced-air heated dry, where steam would billow out of the vent. I thought it was the coolest machine in the world, right along with their Lady Kenmore Solid State of course.
Later, as I became more adept at repair and disassembly of things, I would take the pump assembly apart and clean the scale and gunk from the crevices of the filter and the arm assemblies. My grandparents live where the water comes from a spring, so their water is horrendously hard. It got to a point where once a week granddad would have to take the arms out and clean the scale buildup out of the spray holes with a toothpick. If not for that, they would still surely have that machine and it would have been saved from my aunt, uncle, and cousin's wrathful terror on everything they touch.
Maytag Built-In RR DWs
Mt built three different versions of BI RR DWs over the life of this interesting DW.
The first were also DD pump models, [ roughly 1969-1973 ] they had a side mounted motor and pump assembly mounted in the back of the machine. These were a pain in the A.. to work on as you had to completely remove the DW and turn it over to do many repairs [ just like a Bosch, Meile, etc ].
Then around 1974 they came out with the belt driven RR models, as Barry mentioned this was done to save space and in theory at least to reduce repair costs because you would not have replace the motor when the pump suffered a main seal leak. Problem was that the pump module almost immediately cost more than the complete pump and motor for a Whirlpool DW and was harder to install, LOL. Also because the BD RR DW was more expensive to build because they had to install a set of bearings and shaft in the pump module in addition to having a motor that already had a shaft and bearings the RR DW started out at a BIG competitive disadvantage in the cost to build area. As a result they cheaped out by using a cheap urethane belt instead of a real Vee belt with the motor mounted on a pivot to keep the Vee belt properly tensioned [ MT engineers told me that this was the way they wanted to build the DW initially ]. So owners had to endure a lifetime of funny noises and sometimes poor performance because of belt slippage from their DWs.
After the initial rough start the BD MT RR DW had they eventually got it running pretty well. If you look at the history of any new MT appliance they designed and built in the last 60 years they always had a lot of problems that to their credit they usually ironed out in the next 2-6 years of production.
The final RR DWs went to a DD pump with the motor directly below the pump, this was partly a result of the motor manufactures being to make the motor a little more compact, this change was made around 1989 and the DD RR this time was only built about two years before MT finally abandoned the silly RR configuration because of consumer dislike of this unusual difficult to load design.
When checking over a MT RR DW one should dissemble it and check and clean the Micro-Mesh filter and the BD and later DD models the pump cover could hold all kinds of crap that would get stuck and would just stay there till it eventually discomposed, These were often very messy DWs, my customers often were freaked out at all the garbage their DW contained if they saw me working on it.
Mt built three different versions of BI RR DWs over the life of this interesting DW.
The first were also DD pump models, [ roughly 1969-1973 ] they had a side mounted motor and pump assembly mounted in the back of the machine. These were a pain in the A.. to work on as you had to completely remove the DW and turn it over to do many repairs [ just like a Bosch, Meile, etc ].
Then around 1974 they came out with the belt driven RR models, as Barry mentioned this was done to save space and in theory at least to reduce repair costs because you would not have replace the motor when the pump suffered a main seal leak. Problem was that the pump module almost immediately cost more than the complete pump and motor for a Whirlpool DW and was harder to install, LOL. Also because the BD RR DW was more expensive to build because they had to install a set of bearings and shaft in the pump module in addition to having a motor that already had a shaft and bearings the RR DW started out at a BIG competitive disadvantage in the cost to build area. As a result they cheaped out by using a cheap urethane belt instead of a real Vee belt with the motor mounted on a pivot to keep the Vee belt properly tensioned [ MT engineers told me that this was the way they wanted to build the DW initially ]. So owners had to endure a lifetime of funny noises and sometimes poor performance because of belt slippage from their DWs.
After the initial rough start the BD MT RR DW had they eventually got it running pretty well. If you look at the history of any new MT appliance they designed and built in the last 60 years they always had a lot of problems that to their credit they usually ironed out in the next 2-6 years of production.
The final RR DWs went to a DD pump with the motor directly below the pump, this was partly a result of the motor manufactures being to make the motor a little more compact, this change was made around 1989 and the DD RR this time was only built about two years before MT finally abandoned the silly RR configuration because of consumer dislike of this unusual difficult to load design.
When checking over a MT RR DW one should dissemble it and check and clean the Micro-Mesh filter and the BD and later DD models the pump cover could hold all kinds of crap that would get stuck and would just stay there till it eventually discomposed, These were often very messy DWs, my customers often were freaked out at all the garbage their DW contained if they saw me working on it.
The RR design lasted for 22 years, which is quite a good longevity. If they had problems with consumers not buying the RR design, trust me they would have made amends before twenty two years. I believe 1990/1991 was the last production of the RR. Maytag redesigned the tub and went to the cheap to produce plastic tub, and at this time they also reconfigured the racks.
The RR are actually must easier and intuitive to load than what we often refer to as conventional machines. A term such as "silly" I find very unprofessional and undescriptive. They were designed that way for capacity, flexibility and ease of loading. All three features which were achieved. And as Maytag advertised, they had the advantage of holding more dishes than any other brand.
The belt design had the advantage of a very easy to replace motor. Also, a leak in the pump bearing seal would not decimate the motor as in brands, such as Whirlpool, where the motor is located directly below the pump.
Maytag's had an excellent reputation and were good sellers, but were quite expensive for the day because of the porcelain enameled tub. They could not be fully competetive price-wise for the consumer, not profit wise for the manufacturer. At the end of the RR production, most dishwasher had gone to the plastic (polymer) tubs. And sadly Maytag followed suite.[this post was last edited: 10/10/2014-15:16]
The RR are actually must easier and intuitive to load than what we often refer to as conventional machines. A term such as "silly" I find very unprofessional and undescriptive. They were designed that way for capacity, flexibility and ease of loading. All three features which were achieved. And as Maytag advertised, they had the advantage of holding more dishes than any other brand.
The belt design had the advantage of a very easy to replace motor. Also, a leak in the pump bearing seal would not decimate the motor as in brands, such as Whirlpool, where the motor is located directly below the pump.
Maytag's had an excellent reputation and were good sellers, but were quite expensive for the day because of the porcelain enameled tub. They could not be fully competetive price-wise for the consumer, not profit wise for the manufacturer. At the end of the RR production, most dishwasher had gone to the plastic (polymer) tubs. And sadly Maytag followed suite.[this post was last edited: 10/10/2014-15:16]
I loved loading my grandparents' RR. It was even more flexible than my PowerClean with item placement. You could put plates on both top and bottom, center of the lower rack of course because of the tines and the dip it made in the middle, but I've never seen another dishwasher that could handle the pots and pans and casserole dishes while still having plenty of room for plates bowls and glasses. I was always surprised that tall pitchers placed in the corner of the upper rack would be spotless despite being sprayed from a tower. That Maytag dishwasher design is the only exception to my "No-Tower" rule.
I had a Maytag RR installed when I bought my home in '91. I did not find it difficult to load at all...nor was it a silly design. In fact I found it very flexible as I could load mixing bowls and pots/pans on the top or bottom racks. It cleaned very well and quickly. The short cycle was 67 min, regular 75 min. and pots/pans was 87 min. It was a bit loud however but then most dishwashers of that vintage were loud.
Gary
Gary
What Fun!!
My Maytag-built Jenn Air is super sweet. Mine is one of the last ones from the Newton, IA plant.
Great find for Scott!!
My Maytag-built Jenn Air is super sweet. Mine is one of the last ones from the Newton, IA plant.
Great find for Scott!!
whitetub
Well-known member
Silly design?? To me, it was the best design I ever used. I had one for about 12 years, a used WC 401 Avocado Green, from 1988 to 1999, when I moved to a brand new house. If they still made one, with a stainless steel tub, Nylon racks, I would buy it in a second.
awooff
Well-known member
yes, these can be loaded to the max! - the timer is stuck on mine, didnt bother me as I just advanced the timer manually (while cleaning the rest of the kitchen). These models heat the water constantly so with dirty pots positioned dead center of upper rack, a two hour wash would scour anything clean he he
My grandparents were the type to run the dishwasher every day, only loaded to MAYBE 50% capacity, if that. Now that I look back, it bugs the snot out of me, but at that time I was a little squirt and that was the way it was. I had gotten so attuned to the sound of that dishwasher running with all the dishes spaced out. One night, they had collected a counter-full of dishes and pots and pans (they have gorgeous SaladMaster pans that fit perfectly in a dishwasher and clean up brilliantly), and that Maytag was packed to the brim. Not even another spoon could have fit. When the wash started, I was so worried that something was wrong with the dishwasher because it sounded so muffled and quiet, as you could no longer hear the sound of water torrenting against the door. She had to assure me that the arms were moving freely and that it was quiet because there were more dishes to catch all the water.
everythingold
Well-known member
It seems
People either love the MT RR or they don't, doesn't seem to be much middle ground. A lot of people who grew up with them, like Scott, want them.
Thanks for all the advice, I will post more when it's tested, Scott closes on his house today.
People either love the MT RR or they don't, doesn't seem to be much middle ground. A lot of people who grew up with them, like Scott, want them.
Thanks for all the advice, I will post more when it's tested, Scott closes on his house today.
everythingold
Well-known member
tested!
Works amazing! Superb cleaning, no leaks. Sounds beautiful, I like a noisy dishwasher. The inside is pretty good. Racks have a little rust. Only 2 panels though. Harvest gold, black, white, or bisque. I have seen machines with 4 panels, but overall this was a great find.
Works amazing! Superb cleaning, no leaks. Sounds beautiful, I like a noisy dishwasher. The inside is pretty good. Racks have a little rust. Only 2 panels though. Harvest gold, black, white, or bisque. I have seen machines with 4 panels, but overall this was a great find.
