Operation Matchbox Rescue! - Hoover 3236H

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

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the drawer facia was removed to glue cracks. Will require further strengthening in the near future.

Here is the front sans its cover...

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Through to SUNDAY MORNING

Powder drawer facia glued and reattached and a drive to Wiltshire enabled the following photograph to be taken. NICE!

Thats all for tonight. Will try and post some more over the weekend.

The next installment is when components have current passed through them!

Cheers for viewing
Paul

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Congrarts

Hi Matchbox Paul Congratualtions to you and all who helped in the Hoover Rescue ( i feel Michael Burke doing a documentary soon !)We must be similar ages (im 37) as my parents had a machine like this . They bought it in 1973 just after i was born as my Mam didn't fancy using her 2nd hand twin tub for all those terry nappies i was using. This was the first machine i remember working on with her. She had plumbed it in herself, using jubilee clips to connect the pipes to some old taps a plumber had fitted and managed to straighten out the kink in the drain hose and inserted some green garden hoseand ran it up and along the back of a double sink unit so the machine drained into the kitchen sink ( so i used to dit on the bench and watch all that hot soapy water) Floods did occur occasionally! The Hoover man was not impressed saying it was not designed to pump that far but it worked like this for 7 years until it moved in to a utility room. I remember ours had a black drum with white speckles and a dark green plastic door, which made it very hard to see the clothes and water, and several times i opened the door flodding the kitchen because it was at the rinse hold state. My Mam and i used to remove the lower sump to remove coins and small socks etc and she even replaced the heater element herself, but couldnt quite get the new one in so used a whole tube of bostik , but it worked for several years. It died in 1982 when i remember hearing it make lots of noise and it was replaced by Servis slimlines 320 washer and 220 dryer. I did even take the old Hoover to bits but i wasn't allowed to keep any of the parts.

It was this machine the Hoover man used to come to see and he once gave me a huge pile of hoover transfers and i was gutted when i lost them.

Attached is a picture of me on my trike with what looks like chocolate on my face near the Hoover washer, a green hoover junior sits nearby too, the thing next to it was our ancient Potterton boiler which was used to dry all the clothes on in winter (and our cat loved sleeping on top of it) this seems huge when you think of the dinky little wall mounted units today.

Good luck with the renovation i look forward to some videos

Richard

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The 3236H only has 10 programmes, most people only used about 2-3 programmes. Is B fast spin, and A slow spin. Also I bet it could complete a load in about 1hour or even less, compared to the new machines of today.

Once your new baby is restored its gonna look so cool.

Regards

Paul
 
Varieties

Just noticed that Ricky's powder dispenser and knob (oooer Missus!) appear to be silver/grey rather than the charcoal colour or yours Paul. It stirs a vague recollection in the back of my mind that later versions may have used this colour scheme although when I think "Matchbox" I always think of the charcoal version. That tumble dryer has a grey knob too ....

Al
 
hotpoint 95622

Reading this brought back a long lost memory from my childhood,
I can remember my neighbours having one of these Hoovers; it had an orange panel with the single white rocker switch and I can remember the family, it was two bachelor brothers and there widowed sister, the sister worked at a country house as the cook and on retiring she had this Hoover as a thank you for all the years work.
I can remember she had knocked a hole in the back hall wall and pushed the water hose thought to the bathroom and had a garden hose tap adapter on it to fit the sink tap with chains to keep it in place and most times a towel draped over the tap so if it leaked it would flow down the sink drain, she also made a hole in the back wall and pushed the drain hose out into the yard and used a piece of guttering on a slant for the water to run into the yard drain, I remember she would start the machine with the hot tap and once running she would change to the cold for rinsing. I can’t have been more than about three years old.

The machine died when I was about six, the springs snapped and my day did a bit of welding but it did not last.

Strange how something can bring a memory back, nice good memories.
 
Installment number three

Hi everyone and apologies for the break.

Lots of hassle going on at the moment but, amongst all that, have been working on the matchbox each evening. Current status of the machine will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Hiya Richard and thanks for posting the wonderful photo of you and your old 3236H version 2.
Love old photos and seeing a Potterton boiler again, after 20 years, was a treat too. My godmother had the same bolier in her kitchen, so I grew up with one of those too.

Interesting to hear that yours had a green plastic door. Was this a case of discolouration, or was it always green?
The machine i had as a plaything had a clear plastic door, so did Hoover experiment with a couple of colours?
Hotpoint purple and Hoover green. mmmmmmmmm.

Hiya Paul
The A/B button controls length of spin, not the speed.
The speed is always 720rpm (although later matchboxes, generally the exclusives, were boosted to 800rpm).

Switch set to A resulted in a Rinse Hold being activated. Flick the button to B, then back to A soon after results in a spin of 20 seconds at 720.

Switch set to B resulted in no rinse hold and a 4 minute spin, through to the end of cycle.

You mention cycle times - didnt specifically time them, but these machines flew through their cycles.
One of the memories that both myself and Mathew had was of the dial swinging round swathes of the cycle, half a cm to a cm at a time. This was especially apparrent during the rinses.
A very charecterful machine.

Hi Al.
Yep - Richards machine is the version two updated colour scheme, using orange as the accent colour, whereas the early machines were red.
Dug out the version 2 powder drawer facia at the weekend - brought back memories of my playmachine in my godmothers garage.
Ahhh memories.

Hiya Gary.
Here you go..........
 
Sunday.....

and although its a later orange version dryer, it still looks superb next to the red version 3236H.

I actually think that the silver facia background matches the washer better than the slate grey facia of the actual matching dryer...

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3022 dryer de luxe - Mathew's new acquisition and what must be one of the earliest orange version 2 dryers out there, as its dated November 1972.
That was the year of the colour change over...

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Hi Lee.

Yep - this machine hasnt half stirred a fair old number of memories.
They really were all over the place back then. A very popular machine.

Plumbing stories seem to be a theme, what with yours and Richards story of unusal arrangements.
Discovered only recently that my mum used to push and tug her machine over to the sink, in my parents first marital home.
They never told me that it was unplumbed. A real eye opener, as I came about whilst they were at the second marital home.

My folks might be visiting next weekend! I feel that there will be a bit of a reunion.

Paul
 
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