bias
Nice altering/greatly expanding your one line posting, tomturbomatic, after I had printed a response.
Etching is a chemical process of metal ions being pulled from the glass matrix itself by the alkaline detergents. An eighteen minute wash is somewhat short compared to other brands of the day and VERY short compared to many of todays machines. With todays enzyme based detergents a long main wash period is certainly beneficial. Time and alkali detergent concentration are the primary variables that induce etching. Maytag not only had a relatively short wash time, but used approximately two gallon+ fill where many other machines were 1.1 - 1.6 gallon fill. Thus giving a lesser concentration of detergent, and further reducing etching. Of course, with the high velocity small jets, Maytag didn't need long wash times using most of the detergents of the day.
Bowls were designed to be placed in the upper rack, not the lower rack of the Maytag RR. There are ten dedicated bowl spaces. That's one of the nice features. One can actually fit bowls into each space, unlike my Whirlpools where I had to skip every other space to get dried on food removed from bowls, even then it wasn't always consistent cleaning. With the design of the RR, if you have more than ten bowls, additional bowls fit quite nicely into the saucer racks. Saucer racks are on the upper rack. And even some on the lower rack as well. It was cool how they have the bowls supported in a vertical orientation with the tines going to the top of most standard sized bowls . No bowls tipping over when the top rack is inadvertently pulled out or pushed in too quickly/forcefully.
The ability of a "tower wash" system for the upper rack is proven by the GE 2800 which scored the highest rating in washability. As I have mentioned before, the Maytag RR is the only machine I have had that can give a good scrubbing to the back of my skillets, deep pots, and roaster pans in the upper rack, with the full sized wash arm.
The wash tower scrubs the inside the utensils while the full sized wash arm clean the run-overs on the sides and bottom of the utensils. Bowls, plates and saucers get blasted from the top and bottom. True random loading, as either the wash tower or the full sized wash arm are each independently adept at cleaning.
Yes, this ideal racking design lasted for nearly twenty one years. Sadly, economics took its toll and they went to a cheaper plastic tub and downgraded the racks to the cheaper conventional arrangement that didn't require such a heavy, large upper rack with the larger slides necessary to carry the added weight.
And, to speak colloquially, it's hard to quiet a hurricane!
You have a great machine Jon.
My dream is to one day find such a new, unused treasure as well. I wish you much enjoyment from yours!!
