Solid Tub Two Belt GE AW
WOW Paul I am glad this machine seems to mostly work, and I am glad we could drag it out of the basement of the cool old house where it spent its whole life.
This washer was GEs 2nd AW design and only was built for a few years, it always looked like a clever design to me but I have had almost no experience repairing this short lived design. It has two clutches on the motor, one grabs in one direction and the other grabs in the other direction, designing the washer with belts and clutches allowed a much faster spin speed without affecting the agitation speed. I don't know exactly how fast these machines spin but from the pulley sizes it looks like it should spin somewhat north of 900 RPMs. With the two clutches it eliminated the troublesome helix spring in the transmission that made GE washer transmissions one of the least reliable of almost all AW washers over the last 60 years, including the plastic tub GEs made after 1995.
John L.
Paul the noises that your machine is making may be clutch bearings and of coerce you can also hear the agitator dragging on the bottom of the wash basket [ this is usually caused by a worn agitator and agitator drive block ] but you will not hear that sound when you have water in it.
