Monkey Norge, AKA Ugly Wards

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rickr

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Remember the Wards Signature by Norge that Kenny Goatfarmer had listed here in July? At any rate, there were no takers for the poor thing and I felt sorry for it. I had seen it sitting in the junkyard in 06, and passed on it then, but thought since nobody else wanted it, that I would take it. So met Kenny early one Saturday morning in July and took the poor sucker home.

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After I brought it home, the guys putting in the new sidewalks for me laughed at it. It was so rusty, dented, and full of mud, that it left a trail down the driveway.

I took the powerscrubber to it, inside and out... And tore it down.

She needed a new pump, belt, water walve, lights, switches,hoses, ect. and the leveling legs were so rusted that two of them snapped off, even when heated with a torch.
The rest of the stuff was easy, but I could NOT find a pump.
Ended up fitting a Speed Queen pump to the machine instead. It was kind of the same, anyway....

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Pump from the repainted bottom of the machine...

Note that I replaced the small Speed Queen pulley. It would have made the pump run waaaay too fast, and the belt may have been too large.

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Speed Queen pump from the inside of the machine. I drilled four holes to mount this pump in the machine in place of the original NLA Norge pump.

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another..

The inside of the outer tub was fine, but the outside had many deep pitted marks into the metal. I wire brushed the outside of the tub and sprayed rust proof paint on the outer tub. Strange that this was rusted this way. My guess would be that this machine sat in the junkyard for 20 years, so that is what happens when "tin worms" get hungry...

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A funny thing happened... Of course nobody was around when it came time to move this down the basement... So I tried it by myself....

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And ended up getting it stuck with nobody to help.

I thought the lid looked nice against the new sidewalks though...

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Deante came home, but he was getting cleaned up and ready to go out again. He did help move the Monkey Wards down the basement and even helped me hook it up. But kept the toothbrush in his mouth the entire time, just to let me know he was in a rush... <:

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And the Ugly Wards works just fine!!

First wash!! (and a new roll of film)

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And she spun it all out without a suds lock too!

This machine was built in 1969. It features a neutral drain first, then goes into spin drain for the rest of the drain.

More pics to come later tonight...

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Rick, HOT DAYAM!!!! I got sooo excited and shocked that this ugly duckling works just fine. Let's put it this way, I'm lookin' for a cigarette to smoke!! The billowing suds bring back memories of our 12/22/64 Norge. And your right, it never did a suds lock. Sadly, the billowing suds pictures reminded me of after my mom's mom died and my mom brought a whole bunch of table, bath, and bed linens home that had been stored for years and I had to get them white and clean. I had tons of suds from dumping in a bunch of detergent and bleach. Rick, when you can, I'd love an explanation of how the control panel functions and also good closeup pics of the cycle description chart and other descriptions from the underside of the lid. I never ever saw a machine like this ever. Fascinates me. Incidentally, this panel closely resembles our 1964 Norge. It had the HUGE dial/display in the middle of the panel, the big fat knob used to move the timer around. But, the sliding water level lever was on the far right side below the big control knob. The washer & dryer we had, as it turns out, was the very last washer & dryer shown on the Ozzie & Harriet show in 1964 and 1965 before they ceased production. I wish someone would capture shots of the laundry pair sometimes if they can. And tell Deante he looks very cute with that skeptical, impatient look in the picture.
 
My gosh Rick - this looks great! Did you put a black-light bulb in the panel, what a cool idea. Awesome job on the resto, and retrofitting a Speed Queen pump into place. That's the way to get it done!!!

Ben
 
Beautiful restoration Rick!
That's the same model that my great Aunt had. I use to sneak down her basement when she had it running to watch it wash. I would always come up with some lame excuse as to why I was down there for soooo long. I'm sure that she never suspected that I was fascinated with her washer. She probably just thought I needed to masturbate or something.
 

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