Maytag Wash n Wear feature

[kenmore71]

Perusing through today's "Doctrine Dispener" offering, a curiosity struck me about the "Wash n Wear" feature on Maytag washers in the 1960s.

In looking at the literature for the A906 there is a button labeled "Wash n Wear". The technical specifications on the last page list that cycle as having a "cool-down", "spray" and "deep power" rinses. All other wash cycles have only the "spray" and "deep power" rinses. When you go down to the model A806 there is a "Wash n Wear" selection button but all it does is select high speed agitation and low speed spins. A seperate "Permanent Press" cycle on the A806 would not be introduced until February of 1969.

Correct me if I am wrong, but from service literature I have seen it would appear that the timer and other related control circuitry of the A906 when it was introduced was exactly the same as that which was used on the 160, A900 & A902. The only difference being that the A906 now had the 19 gallon tub with its attendant power fin agitator and faster agitate speed.

Maytag was notoriously conservative with the addition of "new-fangled" features such as "Wash n Wear." If I recall correctly, Kenmore introduced the "cool down" feature in 1958. I'm not sure when other manufacturers introduced it.

This means that Maytag first introduced this feature earlier than I had first thought. I am not certain what year the 160 push button machine was introduced but I think it was in the 1958 or 1959 range.

It then took them 10 years to introduced this cool down feature on any other machine!

Here's the original Wash n Wear timer sequence that was used from the introduction of the 160, through the A900, A902 and original A906. The A906 control was simplified in August 1968.

 

[kenmore71]

Here is the "revised" control sequence. The revised timer used 1 minute rather than 30 second intervals.

 

[combo52]

Maytag WnW cycle

Good research Mark, yes MT did introduce a real WnW cycle with a cold water cool down in 1959 with the introduction of the A160 all push-button washer just two years after the 1958 Lady Kenmore introduced it. The MT WnW cycle while effective was not as good as the LKMs as it didn't use nearly as much cold water in the cool down as the LKM.

 

I remember when our family started using the 1959 LKM that a friend of my Mothers had given us in 1966, that I had rebuilt with the help of my brothers. Since about 1964 I was doing all the laundry for all 6 of us,and when the LKM replaced the MT AMP that we had used for a year or so it was such a thrill to finely have really clean lint free well rinsed clothing. But the best part was the WnW performance of the LKM, and while I love to do laundry to this day I DO-NOT like ironing. I can remember once when my Aunt Margret was over and she walked through the basement while is was doing laundry and she could not get over how great all the shirts looked that were hanging up and wanted to know who had ironed them. I told her that they had been washed on the WnW cycle and hung up right out of the dryer, and that was all.

 

Oddly MTs later WnW cycles used a hi-speed spin even on two speed machines, they never were about best in class performance when it came to laundry appliances.

 

[tomturbomatic]

While the Wash 'n Wear cycle on the washer was important if you hung clothes out to dry, you did not have to do any of that if you put the clothes in a dryer where they could reach the magic temperature of 160F to restore the fabrics to their wrinkle-free state and then cool them down to set the finish. I have washed perma press shirts in a Unimatic and dried them in a Filtrator dryer and had them come out just as wrinkle-free as from machines with special cycles; of course, PP was a more advanced and improved clothing construction process than W 'n W.

If I remember correctly, the push-button Maytags had two separate timers, one just for the Wash 'n Wear, which was how they were able to offer the cycle in that machine.

As I remember, our '58 LK did not offer any agitation during the cooldown, just drains and fills. I found that I could shorten the cooldown process by turning the infinite water level to HI during the fill, then to LO during the drain, since it would not drain as low on HI water level as on LO. By making the pump work longer the timer increment passed quicker since the timer did not operate during fill, but did operate during the drain.