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Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

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panthera

panthera

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Hi Folks. Have lived in Germany for 20 some years now, am moving back to the 'States to help take care of my folks. Don't know if I will be back permanently or still able to split my time back and forth for a while...
I like good machinery and when I ran into your site the first thing I saw was a picture of what looked like my old rollermatic. A broken one, who'd a thunk it...just like mine usually was. But I loved it. The danger and joy of pursuading it to clunk the pulsator down and spin like mad with my pinky in the transmission. The scent of burning nylon rollers...ah, heady youth.
Hope to learn a lot from you folks, after all these years barely know anyone in Ft. Collins anymore...and the rest of the 'States doesn't look real friendly to gay men right now...so, yeah, kind of childhood memories here.
 
Panthera,
Welcome, welcome. You will find a very friendly and lively group here. Here's to getting to know you!
Bobby in Boston
 
Hi Kevin and Welcome! We are generally more LGBTC friendly than most of the country and the Supreme Court sorta pruned back some of Colorado's bigotry, so it's not a worst case scenario yet, but all of us should have a passport against the day when those who feel closest to Jesus feel called upon to demonstrate it by making sure that the rights of citizenship in this country are reserved for heterosexuals, preferably Christian, only.

Do you have any favorite German or European appliances in your Munich residence you would care to describe to us? Some members have Miele appliances. I don't know anything about Ft. Collins, but if your parents live in an older neighborhood or if you have time to patrol any thrift stores while there, keep a watch for vintage appliances, like from childhood, and share your sightings with us. Tom
 
a warm welcome

Thanks all, that is a warm welcome. When I was working in a used appliance shop back in 1989-91, I got to see a lot of mini AEG washers which were about the size of a footstool with a big dictionary sitting on it. They washed a 9 pound load (4.2kilo) and had a wonderfully weird way of spinning the clothes dry: water would fill the tub to slightly more than half. In the middle of a tumble the motor - running over one gigantic capacitor - would suddenly switch to spin. The whole machine would be lifted off the floor and bounce a few times on the rollers - which were hooked up directly to schock absorbers which would do a mid-sized car proud. They were surprisingly trouble free, but known as toilet bowl killers. People kept them next to the sink in the bathroom and boy did they wander. The last ones had an electronically controlled spin which was absolutely unreliable - from the most reliable mini in Germany to the most trouble prone piece of junk in one easy move. Killed them off, too.
Saw lots of Mieles, but this is already too long - if anybody is interested, just ask.
Thanks again for the words of encouragement!
(und Stefan, auch wenn ich "nur" ein 'zugereister' bin, danke! Minga es scho a wahnsinn)
 
Hey Kevin, your post was not too long. We love to go on and on about our machines. Please share more of your experiences.

Years ago some coin operated laundries we used had big bolt-down Milnor washing machines that also extracted. They went from tumble into a distribution phase that gradually went fast enough that the load was held to the side of the cylinder, THEN the drain valve was opened. It was pretty neat to watch as there was lots of water pouring down the window. The slow speed spin continued for a while and then shifted up through higher speeds. We used to wash throw rugs in them and they spun about as well as anything else at the time.

Do you have any pictures of this little AEG washer? Do you think that having a locking brake on 2 or 4 of the rollers would have kept it from wandering? Do you think that it probably would have bounced less if it had gone into a slower speed spin first? Did it only spin at the end of the cycle or did it spin between some of the other water changes? We have a German Frigidaire washer that is more than 20 years old that washes, rinses 4 times and then gives the load its one and only spin.

It sure does not take much to break a toilet bowl. When I worked in houseskeeping at a hospital, we were cautioned to be very careful when taking the big floor machines into the bathrooms to scrub the tile floors. One tap of that big motor against the bowl and you were paying for a replacement. I think I would have padded the side of the AEG that was close to the china bowl.

Thanks again for sharing.
Tom
 
Louis, does yours do the jumping start into spin or is it the electronic type like Kevin mentioned? Do you remember AEGs that jumped and rolled a bit? Kevin, is this the size and shape machine you are talking about? Louis, does yours extract after each drain or does it just spin after the last rinse? Thanks to both of you. Tom
 
Tom,

My AEG toploader is a newer one (an AEG Lavamat 220). It has an electronic timer, but still has the increments. The start of the spincycle is more traditional, it drains and after a while it tumbles for a very short time and goes straight to the one and only speed (650rpm). There was also a 850rpm model that did 850rpm. Those machines had troublesome spincycles and later AEG modified the spin into a two step spin that started at 400rpm and later went up to 850rpm.

I have no experience with the older models. From Kevin's description I get the impression they start spinning with a full drum. I didn't know that. If that is the case I would love to find one. Until now I thought only Philips did that.

The jumping or bouncing is another thing. My 220 does that too. It has the same suspension system as Kevin describes. It's more or less like the inside of a machine without the outside. Instead of a vibrating inside you get a vibrating machine. Very funny to watch.

I added a picture of an older model. It's an AEG Lavamat 64SL. This is an ad from 1973. With thanks to the Waschmaschinen-forum.

4-6-2006-13-52-52--foraloysius.jpg
 
yup, that was one of them

The 64 sl was one of the last reliable AEGs. And yes, they did come in that color. They also came in a chocolate brown and a green which beggars description. There was a nice broken white with a brown top, too.
Did a super job washing and rinsing. The two speed spin I had forgotten, it worked pretty well actually. Take a look at the corners on that case and imagine this very solid, very heavy thing slamming into your toilet bowl. Goodbye toilet. The German text reads: The smallest colorful space-saver. The 64SL did not extract after every rinse, it could be programmed to hold the water (spülstop) after the last rinse. This was supposed to make it easy to add fabric softener or keep things from wrinkling too badly.
I miss them, they had 230V, 15 Amp heating elements for the water and boy were they thorough. The whine of the motor and the sound of the clothes slapping through the water...
Oh, the lids in the 64SL series could be forgotten. Then the drum rotated and the clothes jammed against the heating element. The machine was often destroyed or flooded everything.
 
Tom, I remember some older AEG toploaders, even with the old type brushless motors did extract after each rinse, and some models only did that after the 2nd out of 5 rinses.
Not sure about the draining before the spin, but anyway this type of spin (without draining before) was a way to distribute the load evely, but wosened the tendency of sudslocks.
Zanussi for example favored this way of spin for many years.
 
Thank you Louis, Kevin and Mrboilwash (Great name; I love the 190 wash on my machines)

Kevin, Louis and MBW, what is this about the lids being forgotten? Do you mean the part of the cylinder wall that opened to load and unload clothes? You could close the top cover that we can see in the photo with the drum access port still open? That sounds like a poor design. Was this section hinged to one or both sides of the opening or was it a section that unlocked and lifted out? Did the top of the machine have to lock electrically when it was on to withstand the force of all of the water when the cylinder was jerked into spin? It must have looked like a little spastic robot, a science project that went bad or something out of a cartoon when it started jumping around, especially when you consider the weight of all of that water. I'll bet that would have been a wild ride if you sat on it when it did that. When I was in elementary school, there were some friends who were asked by their mothers to sit on top of their Frigidaire washers during the spins to keep the shaking of the machine on a wooden floor to a minimum. Two other friends had to sit on top of the family Bendix top loaders with the rubber tub so that the lid would seal properly for the vacuum extraction.
 
insane science project, definitely one gone bad

yup, yup - only the last models had / have (still being built, but radical other technology, no more jumping on the legs) a two piece cover which "locks" into the frame. The 64SL and most of these just had a removable cover which you had to remember to lock back into place. No interlock there.
The lid locked down with a pretty impressive lock, 'tis true. Was operated by a thermal switch. Not a problem as a the switch started to cool down while the machine was doing its wonderful back and forth at the end of the last spin to loosen up the clothes from the wall of the drum.
Two other things I remember:
- Some of these used an electronic brake at the end of the spin to bring the speed down in no-time. This loosened the clothes up very well.
- They had an opening at the back to vent soap suds. Sometimes this led to the nasty situation of water and suds running down under the rollers...and away we went.
My ex- and I did try you know what on the lid of one of these - very solidly built they were. It was not happy. The need to bounce in place was absolute. Blew another electronic module. Oh, my paws and whiskers, I did so hate those. Hah, yet another thing I just remembered (I am really starting to miss them). There was no electronic sensor to locate the porthole up when the machine stopped, but it wasn't needed - the clothes fell to the bottom, the porthole was on top. The ridges in the drom were so designed that clothes couldn't stick to them.
Miele does use electronics for their top-loader drum positioners.
 

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