small question what would be the chances that maytag would seperate from whirlpool?

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I think there's about as much chance of Maytag becoming a separate high quality manufacturer as there is of GE buying their appliance manufacturing back from the Chinese Haier company and making high quality US washers and dryers on their own.

Though I may be confused as to how Maytag would still be a separate company but still owned by Whirlpool.

It would be nice if Whirlpool/Maytag was to have a high-quality line, but they would have a hard time getting back my trust after the experience I've had with their garbage-quality products and their worse than worthless "customer service". Whirlpool has not only destroyed their own name, but the name of every competitor they have bought up.

Even the Maytag "Commercial" (MVWP575), which I saw as the last hope for the Whirlpool Corportation, isn't anywhere near up to the standard of an old Maytag, and it's supposedly built on its own assembly line.

I think the days of low-priced quality products are over.
 
Maytag should be thankful that their name was destroyed?

I think it would have been better to die an honorable death, just go out of business rather than sell your name to a company that is just going to abuse it for profit. But maybe Maytag trusted Whirlpool to uphold the values the name Maytag represented, and Whirlpool sold them out the way they sold out their customers and themselves.
 
   [ But Maybe Maytag trusted Whirlpool to uphold the values the name Maytag represented ]

 

Sorry Jeff but this line gave me my morning laugh. 

 

Maytag was in great financial condition in the early 80s with pretty good product that customers were winning up to buy [ Like Speed Queen today ] and Maytags right wing anti labor management decided rather than invest in their factories, workers and badly needed improved products they decided to sell out the Union workers and buy several junk brands that were just going to go out of business on their own.

 

Norge 

Magic Chief 

Hardwick

Admiral

Hoover

 

The only brand that they bought later that was a good fit was Amana, but they bought it after Goodman had had it for a few years and already gutted it of some of its assets.

 

Maytag was going to take on Whirlpool, GE and Frigidaire and become a major player Jack Welsh style.

 

It worked for a while till customers started realizing what over priced junk MT was selling and the problems started piling up, the rest is history.

 

Unfortunately Whirlpool suffered as well by paying way to much for what was really only a name when WP should have been investing in improvements in it existing products and customers instead in order to take on the coming Asian appliance junk.

 

John L.
 
Maytag's Demise

As sad as it is to say it, Maytag destroyed their name prior to the Whirlpool buyout.

First they did it through their Atlantis, Amana, Crosley, Magic Chef and Performa washers. These washers had an astronomical premature failure rate. So much so I remember in the late 90s/early 2000s people would always bring up Maytag as the dreaded brand to avoid with personal antidotes about how their 3 year old Performa washer caused their home to fill with stinky smoke from a burned up pulley. I tried educating people that there were "fake" vs "genuine" Maytags but they seemed less interested in differentiating between the two and more about how much repair grief a Maytag appliance had given them.

Even their high end products like the Maytag Valet were dominated the cheesey Crosley design down to the lint filter.

Their other budget appliances also didn't help much due to their mediocre performance while being so close in appearance/relation to their genuine products ie the JetClean system.

In short consumers began deriving the equation Maytag = disappointments

Second blunder was the front load Neptune. Between the wide scale motor control failures and the mold issues Maytag's reputation had completely evaporated through word of mouth.

As I understand it Maytag wanted a larger share of the market by offering larger capacity washers and dryers relative to their Newton design at a lower price but the idea was so poorly executed it back fired.

There is also the conspiracy that a former executive who worked for Whirlpool brought the company down so Whirlpool could one day gobble up the market share.

What ever the case, by the late 90s the Maytag name was only trusted by those who had a 30 year old Newton chugging along.
 
Whirlpool is not going to sell or otherwise spin off Maytag, nor any of the other brands it also acquired as part of deal that were part of same such as Norge, Amana, Admiral, JennAir, etc..

Frederick Maytag and Elmer Henry Maytag along with other members of that family must be spinning in their graves over fate of Maytag. However in the end Maytag had no one to blame but themselves for sad state of affairs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maytag
 
Pierre

You make it sound like the two (companies) are mutual co-habitants in a rough relationship. That's not how it works.

Whirlpool bought Maytag, and numerous other companies that have been mentioned above, and they can do what they want with the name, the patents, the models, and the assets that were included in the sale.

They could have simply shut down the brand and scrapped the whole division in part or whole.
 
Could see Maytag turning Jenn-Air into a higher tier brand, sort of like what WP did with KitchenAid, but that's all water under a bridge now.

By 1980's onwards Maytag's management simply make one huge mistake after another, but never would learn. Hoover was supposed to be Maytag's big break into UK/Europe. Instead after the famous (or infamous) holiday package scandal Hoover's name (and value) was rubbish.

Neptune washer and dryer line should have put Maytag back on the map. But again they never would be told and simply doubled down on bad bets. By time they finally changed things around to where Neptune front loaders were where they should have been, that name along with Maytag was one of execration.

If Maytag was shopping around for something to buy back in 1980's it should have been one of the European appliance makers with solid technology in producing h-axis washing machines.
 
Ideally

Agree, and more than anything Maytag should never have put another a top loader or dryer other than their Newton design. They perfected the design, and thats all they needed. Advertising would have done the rest. With things like spray rinses it could have survived into today. Lower sales yes, however it would have kept their reputation going. And perhaps with things like Lid lock more people would have switched over to Maytag as they have with Speed Queen.

FWIW, I view the Newton design as the greatest top load washer ever made in the history of man, by far.

Sometimes the wheel does not have to be re-invented in order to live on.
 
Greatest top load washer ever made

The simplicity is brilliant. Spin the motor one way the tub locks and it washes, reverse it, and the tub and all spin while the pump goes from sucking air to pumping the water out. So good they kept it many decades with few changes and built up a reliability rating second to none in washers for decades as well. The people that invented that setup deserve statues in bronze in Newton.
 
Bronze Statue

Absolutely!

Each day the Newton design proves its self by another factor with 30 year machines moving onto 40 after two belts being changed out.

Had Maytag put fins on the agitators they would have sold 20 times the number rivaling Whirlpool in the process.

The Newton design is one that should definitely be brought back.
 
Pitman trans Maytags.......

Are like GE Monitor Tops. The fact so many are still in daily use after many decades is proof of their genius in design. They werent kidding back then with their slogan " The Dependability People ". The automotive equivalent would be the Mercedes 240D or Volvo 240.
 
 
The Whirlpool transmission repair video above is only the neutral drain kit, and spin clutch which is external to the transmission.  All the other parts in the transmission were not discussed and/or removed.

This video covers more of it but still not quite everything.

6:00 the neutral drain plate is correctly called the rack retainer.  The screw anchors it to the main drive gear so the rack retainer rotates with the main drive gear whenever the motor runs.  The rack retainer is also present in spin-drain versions of the transmission, on which there is a spin pawl but not the other two neutral drain components, and the underside of the spin gear has a spring that fits on the hub instead of the toothed cam.

6:12 the spin gear pinion is driven by the larger plastic spin gear.  The notched top of it protrudes through the transmission cover (an oil seal is there) and the clutch drum mounts to it.  The spin gear is held stationary during agitation and neutral drain so the spin gear pinion and clutch drum accordingly also do not rotate.

6:22 is the connecting rack and is what makes the agitator shaft oscillate.

6:44 is the shift actuator and is what shifts the agitator gear cam to engage or disengage agitation according to which direction the motor is running.

6:51 is the main drive gear, which meshes to the input worm pinion/gear beneath it.

7:00 notice that the agitator gear cam parts are plastic.

7:06 the disc and ball comprise a thrust bearing for the agitator shaft.

7:25 the input worm pinion/gear (to which the motor coupler mounts) is not removable unless the oil seal on front exterior is removed.

9:49 the first neutral drain piece is the trip lever which is involved in resetting the mechanism during agitation for neutral drain that then follows.

10:11 the second piece placed on the rack retainer is the spin pawl which is what drives the spin gear.

10:16 the third longer metal piece is the latch which holds the spin gear cam from rotating during neutral drain, which in turn holds the spin pawl from driving the spin gear.

The spin gear cam is shown at 6:03 in Eugene's video above, on the underside of the spin gear.  The flat end of the spin pawl mates to any of the three protrusions (bosses) on the underside perimeter of the spin gear to drive it.  One of the three bosses (the one at the bottom by his thumb) has a little button molded into it which bumps the trip lever and is involved in the neutral drain reset process during agitation (10 bumps does the reset).

 
 
Jerome, direct-drive agitation stroke is 100 degrees.  That has been discussed in the past.

I quoted this to you in a discussion in August 2021 and am citing it again now directly (including a typo) from the L-46 Design 2000 Direct Drive Washer training manual dated 1981:

Agitate Speed:
  177-181 Strokes Per Minutes High Speed
  118-122 Strokes Per Minute Low Speed (2 Speed Machines)
  100° [degree symbol] Arc

All direct-drive transmissions are the same gearing and produce the same speeds and stroke arc regardless of what brand washer is involved.

High agitation is typically stated as 180 strokes per minute.

Low is typically stated as 120 strokes per minute.

There wasn't an extra-low speed in 1981, it came in later.  Extra-low is 88 to 92 strokes per minute and is typically stated as 90 strokes per minute.
 
maytag centennial

It's amazing to me that the "maytag centennial" label would be slapped on a whirlpool direct drive,when they could've eliminated the name altogether. To me, the 100 degree agitation arc sounds a bit much for that design. I don't know how whirlpool did that.
Why couldn't they just use 100 strokes per minute at high instead of 180 strokes per minute. Somebody told me that the agitation was a 90 degree arc.
 
 
Centennial is of course reference to the 100th anniversary of Maytag washers, which I believe happened in 2007 after Whirlpool bought Maytag in 2006, so they reasonably and legitimately used the term for marketing purposes.

You'd have to ask the engineering team that developed the direct-drive transmission for the details on their design decisions.  They surely did testing on the performance at a range of parameters to settle on the end result.

Now you know that whoever it was that told you the stroke arc is 90 degrees was wrong about that.  It's a whole 10 degrees more.
 
Whirlpool/Maytag

It seems to me when Maytag claimed to have an upgraded transmission and stainless steel drum, they were using the Whirlpool direct drive with the Maytag name on it. I guess I can correct whoever told me it was 90 degrees. I think the Centennials used whirlpool oil when they claim to use synthetic transmission oil.
 

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