Some thoughts about timers for our vintage appliances

[turquoisedude]

It's out there and it's spreading.... Black timer motor death.   Those old round Ingraham type timer motors could fall victim to it at any moment it would seem.  One day, your beloved 60-year old washer is happily spinning and draining, then the next time you try it, it won't budge beyond 'fill'.

 

I apologize for the cheesy melodrama, but I now have 5 vintage machines (washers and dishwashers mostly) which are sidelined because the timer motor has failed.   I have attempted to substitute motors unsucessfully in the past, but this past weekend, I had a thought:  would it be possible to have new timer motors manufactured?  I'll guess that this may have been investigated in the past but never got far due to the quantities required to make a manufacturer be interested in doing this.   However, with the number of collectors here, it may be possible to reach a minimum order point. 

 

One thing I have never really been ceratin about either are the specs for these timer motors (other than voltage).  How fast do they turn is the one question I've never been able to find an answer to.   I realize that there may also be different kinds of drive gears and the drive pinion shaft may need to be longer on some motors to drive a specific escapement.  

 

I know the idea has been explored for the infamous Westy Slant-Front door boots and never came to fruition, but maybe if we put our heads together, we can figure out a way to get a supply of replacement timer motors somehow. 

 

Robert, if this post is not appropriate for this forum, please do not hesitate to move it.  I wasn't 100% sure, so I took a chance on putting it in Imperial.  

 

 

[travis]

Paul,

It's good to be investigating this. The problems I see would be the order amount and the person making the order putting up the cash. I think the problem with the door boot was more of a lack of commitment of the member proposing the idea. It's very possible to have necessary parts made, but we need to get past the thought that they would be low-cost as in the old days of mass production.

There are lots of reproduction parts made for cars, jukeboxes and radios. The more demand there is for something the low the cost is. The question remains if we as members would be willing to pay enough to have our machines run.

 

[combo52]

Replacements for the old black timer motors

The smaller silver colored timer motors that PR Mallory used from 1956 through the mid 60s fit the earlier style timers perfectly with no real modifications.

The electrical windings go open on the old black style timers due to poor manufacturing processes that results in corrosion and making them fail. I have not seen this type of failure in the silver timers it seems like things have improved a lot a little later on.

 

[swestoyz]

I'll second John's post.  I've used the later style, smaller, silver motors on the earlier timers and they worked just fine for Malory timers.  In fact I've seen several Maytag rebuilt AMP timers that had a replacement silver motor on them after they were refurbished.  Thankfully these later motors are plentiful on timers that can be hand pretty cheaply on eBay, etc.

 

The only major modification that you may need to do is to convert the wiring from a spade connector (later motor) to a Douglas connector (round pin, earlier motor), and possibly use shorter screws to hold the motor body in place on the escapement if required.

 

Ben

 

[turquoisedude]

OH, this is good news!  I need like 5 of those, though. And I'm getting paranoid about future failures.... 

 

John, do you have any in stock??  

 

[gyrafoam]

Hey Paul

I feel your pain.
I needed one for my '58 Whirly Timeline only to discover Whirly says not to "attempt" replacing the motor! They say I have to replace the whole timer! A needle in a haystack!
Jason was able to rig a Motor off of a GE timer and made my Norge Timeline work again!
I just can't see well enough to try such things now.

 

[christfr]

been there get on ebay and look for timer motors you can retrofit them into the really old timers

 

[lebron]

I've also experienced my share of timer problems. Would it be possible to build your own control for the washer? Something like a board of toggle switches for manual control.

 

[volvoguy87]

Super Unimatic 2.0.

lebron, look up Robert's (Unimatic1140) Super Unimatic 2.0. It is controlled remotely via a computer. It certainly gets the job done.

Dave

 

[panthera]

Thoughts on motors

I collect Telechron rotor powered devices. Until fairly recently, replacements were a fortune. Repair (the real thing, not the drill a dirty hole and pour in some blue 3in1) was worth every penny, but, gosh, expensive!

 

So - what I've learned that applies to timer motors:

If it's the field coil (windings), frequently there's something out there, even 'new', which will work. Precision here is not needed, 'good enough for gub'ment werk' will do. 

If it's the dogs, didn't we figure out that the nylon in some high-temp melt glues worked quite well? I know I did a set for an ancient (it was even avocado) Maytag A10x and they lasted six months of several uses a day until I finally found a real set.

If it's the gears, they're almost never stripped, just gummed up to death. Dratted lubricants in the pre-synthetic days were trash. Many (but not all) lithium/teflon greases turned out to be pre-cursers to a material which would put the densest granite to shame.

Cleaning out the frozen up oil/grease and lightly lubricating will often make them work again.

 

3D-Print shops are now reasonable. A damaged gear or part can be done quickly and not that expensively, relatively speaking. This will, ultimately, be the answer to many of our parts problems. Already in use in many industries.

 

Finally, micro-processor control (dare I say Arduino?) is no longer a black-book for those of us who have degrees in IT. I've set up simple control systems twice now when there was nothing else to be done and both times the unobtainium parts showed up on fleabay within a week. That's powerful majick.

 

 

 

[northwesty]

Rewinding

Didn't someone on this forum document how they broke open and old timer and rewound it with the properly weighed wire, using a drill? If I remember the operation was a success.

 

[akronman]

Answer to reply7, homemade control boards

YEs, it can be done. My 1960 Whirlpool washer was severley mis-behaving and I thought it was an irreplaceable pushbutton timer. I built a control board and wired over to it. Numerous On/Off toggles for Hot and Cold inlet valves, but first the power leads for those went thru the water level switch so I could not overflow. Then numerous On/Off/On switches for the wig-wag solenoids, even switches for the bleach and fab soft dispensers! And a motor control switch for High speed versus low, I had every option wired in. (it was a long cold snow spell, I needed a project)
It was fun, it let you TOTALLY control your cycle, and of course it was ENTIRELY hands on all the time.
But it did not solve the severely misbehaving washer, so I did more tearing apart of the underside of the washer to find out that the bar holding the 2 cam-bars in place on the top of the tranny was loose as hell. Once I overtightened that, all problems went away and I was able to rewire the original timer in.

But I also have a 1950 WP washer, still unrepaired, with no timer or timer motor. Well it doesn't have a main motor either! If I ever get around to restoring it, I might have to pull out that KM/WP control board and wire it in.

Frankly, for many machines that use reversing motors, Maytag, Norge, GE, it would be even easier to make a control board.

I realize it is purely a last ditch effort for us hobbyists, it isn't for the daily driver machine.

Thanks
MArk

 

[ken]

Answer to reply #10

Here's the thread concerning David's work with rewinding an old timer.

Timer repair for Kevin's Apex washer

Most of you will recall that Kevin recently picked up a very rare vintage Apex washer, one of only two known to club members. After years of neglect it needs a lot of tlc to get it going again. So after the initial clean up, since very little happens on a vintage machine without a functioning...

www.automaticwasher.org