Almost like a TROY Big Boy
The Easy combo, as it says, had no suspension system. The feet were placed in rubber cups that were screwed to the floor to keep it from moving during the spin surge rinses. The Easy had two motors, one for tumbling and one called an Accellex (sp?) motor for spinning. They were mounted at the top back corners of the cabinet. I thought I remembered that John and Jeff had saved a pair of them. The tilt tub made a deeper pool of water at the rear and kept the load positioned more to the rear where the weight of the motors helped stabilize the dynamic forces when the tub sped up. During the rinses, the spin motor would cut in and out in brief bursts while the tub had water in it to help force the water through the load. Since the tumble action method does not force water through fabrics like agitator action, this was kind of brilliant on Easy's part. The machine could not really do good extraction and you don't get the best rinsing without extracting but this spin surge helped compensate for that by forcing the rinse water through the fabrics then draining it away. This surging was what made the machine sort of want to slide sideways and why the machine had to be in its cups to stay in place.
The water extraction was done with the bursts of the spin motor also. Only the Bendix-designed combos and the water-ballast WP-made combos did any real spinning. The Easy's answer to the water extraction problem was these bursts of speed alternated with tumbling which tried to achieve with brief bursts of speed and the resulting G forces during the acceleration what other manufacturers tried to achieve with more sustained slower spins--water extraction without excessive vibration. By using the two motors, they were able to eliminate a speed changer mechanism. Many of the other combos alternated periods of tumbling and spinning during the final spin period, both to repeatedly attempt to rebalance the load as more and more water was extracted from it and to try to reposition the items against the perforated drum so that more water might be squeezed out of them in the next spin period. One manufacturer likened it to squeezing a sponge. When you first squeeze a sponge, you get water out of it, but when you release the pressure and reposition it in your hand, you will get more water out when you squeeze it again. I think what this story most explained was why you could hand-wring water out of the load after it finished spinning in most combos.
An older friend had an Easy in Miami and used it for years. A friend's mom had one BRIEFLY, then had the dealer take it back for just a washer. She put a Bendix dryer with the door knob in the middle of the glass on the back porch. I asked about the switch, but nobody wanted to volunteer much information. I figured it was not a pleasant experience.
Easy was the only manufacturer, other than Bendix, to offer as many variations in their model line. They had both electric and gas, vented as well as condensing and undercounter models as well as models with tops and backsplashes. Many people bought Easy based on Arthur Godfrey's influence and reputation with the public based on his daily radio and then TV show. The Murray Corporation, later the Hupp Corporation, even into the 60s firmly believed in their combo and believed that combos were the future of laundry equipment in the US. Sad--sorta like many people's disappointing experience with a combo.
