GE Series Wound Disposalls
Were cheap, noisey and crude disposers. There is a housing development [ Calverton ] near by where Kettler Brothers built 1800 homes from 1963-1969, they all had GE kitchens with a GE disposall, the first year or so had the GE induction units after that they all had the cheap builder SW units.
Over the years I have been in at least 1/2 of these houses and replaced at least a hundred or more of these disposers personally. The usual failures were, bad bearings, motors that went electrically dead, cutters that broke off the flywheel [ very common, and if you think that these things were noisy you should have seen people trying to use them with just one cutter, the water would dance out of the sink, LOL ] and they also suffered from really flimsy attachment clips that often allowed the unit to just start to fall loose from the sink flange.
The only good thing about these GE SW was that they were the first mass produced units that were basically corrosion proof in construction, before these came around every disposer had many parts made of cast aluminum and as a result most disposer failures were caused by corrosion and leaks. Because of this these GE SW disposalls could last as long as 10-15 years for families that did not use them much and certainly did not try grinding bones and corn cobs, etc.
As Robert [ syndets2000 ] also mentioned these GE SWDs were not great at grinding food waste very finely, I have a comparison report from Maytag comparing their new disposers with all other popular brands including the better and cheap GE SW units and the difference in grind quality is huge. I also have a similar report from Whirlpool comparing their disposers with both style GE units. I also saw the CRs test where they complained of poor grinding and last but not least I have the GE service manual for their Disposalls where they recommend the SWDs primarily for NEW CONSTRUCTION, I don't make this stuff up.
Using a SWM for a disposer is a stupid idea, SWMs are great motors and work well in appliances like vacuum cleaners where they can run at near full speed and have lots of cooling air going through them. As mentioned SWMs do produce a lot of torque at a stalled condition, but doing this much plays hell on brushes, commutators and on the windings them selves especially in an appliance with NO COOLING system.
I am sure that this is one of the reasons that we replaced so many of the units that were completely dead, often the customer even told us that they tried to grind up most of a water melon etc right before it died. [ and yes we even checked to see if the over-load protector had died, we would replace the OLP if that was all that was wrong with the unit ]
I would have to put the GE SW-Dispossalls in the same class as their use of the cheap shaded pole motors in their DWs for so many years.
But after all "Profits Are GEs Most Important Product" Along with outsourcing jobs to every country possible.
John L.