If you had asked me when I was 16 if I had ever intended to work on laundry appliances, my answer would have been "What?!?". But, as luck would have it, I was handed a set of circumstance that changed all that in about 5 minutes.
As a kid, I enjoyed my Mother's 1961 Kenmore very much. I also enjoyed looking at other people's washers AND looking at new ones on sales floors of Sears and other stores. We replaced the '61 Kenmore in fall 1974, with the usual excitement for me of a new washer to play with. What I did not expect was the eventual remorse for the loss of the old washer. I am a very sentimental guy anyway, so I always wished that we had simply put the old washer in the basement, but my folks would never have done that.
So, having learned that "lesson" of sorts, when faced with a failure of the '74 in 1981 that was going to force us to replace it (we even selected and paid for a new machine at Sears), I allowed my desire to keep the old machine to overpower the excitement of buying a new one, and I set out to figure or fenagle a way to keep that 1974 machine from meeting the scrapper.
The repair estimate from Sears on the old machine told us everything we needed, and I was able to get a slight discount on the parts AND get some service tech advice and tutoring on a similar machine. My Dad did as much work as I did, but somehow he and Mom agreed to my idea of the DIY work, which we did out on the back porch of our house in a February snow storm (covered porch fortunately). Magically the repair worked on the first shot, and the machine was like new. I was literally giddy, it really was fun to set out with a goal, and complete it exactly as I had envisioned even though the next day we cancelled the new washer.
That scenario though planted the seed of interest. When mentioning this to my chemistry teacher in school, he said "oh if you want to keep doing that, I can get you all the washers you want because I deliver them for Sears on the side". My parents were very firm "Not in our garage you don't!" so I wasn't able run with my "washer clinic" idea until 1990 when I got my own house.
I met a buddy in Charlotte who was happy to have a mentor and co-conspirator who so obviously enjoyed his profession and we worked out a deal with Sears for their haul-aways. From late 1990 to 1998, I re-habbed about 50 Kenmore and Whirlpool washers, all of which had been saved from the crusher. Suddenly I had turned my interest in using washing machines to a crusade to extend their usefulness, and I made money doing so. Now I just work on them for my own enjoyment, but it has been very rewarding to add that chapter to my lifetime hobby.
Gordon
