testing a 1997 DD WP

[cfz2882]

grabbed a 1997 WP DD at a junkyard(undamaged!)and tried it
on spin before hooking up water-just hummed.Finding that the
motor rotated ok,thinking it might have a centrifugal switch
problem,swapped the motor with one from a damaged '97 roper
-working great.Wash sequence was kinda interesting;starts with
high speed agitation(just boiling rollover LOL)agitates on high
for a while,stops,agitates at low speed for a bit,does neutral
drain,motor shuts off,tranny clunks into gear as motor slows,
restarts does spin,stops does rinses with fast agitation,final
spin. I've heard these are sometimes noisy,but this one at
least was fairly quiet

 

[strongenough78]

Hmmmmm......

Did you have it on a Permanent Press, or Casual cycle? Those cycles on those washers will start to agitate fast then slower for the last like 6 minutes. A Heavy Duty or Normal Cycle will agitate fast through the whole wash cycle.

 

[cfz2882]

it was the normal cycle-thought it unusual what it would run
a low speed agitation at the end of the main wash cycle.
For kicks,tried several different size loads with this washer
VS.a 1984 speed queen with the SQ's long, slower stroke-even
with the dual action auger,the short stroke DD was more
sensitive to overloading,rollover just about stopped on the
DD while the SQ still pulled them under...
properly loaded,the DD still seemed to do a good wash job
and spun out the large loads without any trouble.

 

[davek]

The cost of having someone come fix it is the problem. If you work on it yourself, most problems are cheap to fix. If you have to pay someone else to fix it due to ignorance or disability-it doesn't matter-it quickly turns into new washer territory instead for most people.

 

[DADoES]

 
Some models do shift to low speed part-way through the Normal/Regular cycle.

 

[yogitunes]

Thats part of Whirlpool's GENTLE WASH system....this is NORMAL...washes at high speed, and about at the 6 minute mark, jumps to low speed.....I actually hate this feature on this machine, cause once it goes to low speed, roll over seems to stop on big loads

 

[davek]

My portable does the speed change on the Cotton/Sturdy cycle.

 

[kenmoreguy64]

I have seen videos on Youtube with WP washers doing that speed shift.

Seems to me, though I could be wrong, that DDs first tried to emulate a BD in cycles, in fact the first Kenmore DDs had cycle layouts exactly like those on the corresponding BD counterparts.

But, as time went on and DDs were developed, various methods were devised to deal with the vigorous agitation and what I'm thinking is the casual user's tendency to select too much wash time when using the DD machine.

WP had the speed slow-down, and in the 1992 and later Kenmores, the fast agitation/fast spin cycle in many models became the 'Heavy Duty' cycle, and the 'Normal' cycle was operated at full-time slow agitation and fast spin.

After using my Kenmore for a while, I became accustomed to this and came to like it. The Normal cycle was great for loads that were 1/2 to 3/4 full (which would have had spastic rollover in the HD cycle) and the Heavy Duty would be used only for large, full loads. I actually enjoyed using multiple cycles on my machine because I do not use the Perm Press, so on this machine I regularly used two different cycles.

I can see why people wouldn't like WP's 6-minute speed change, but I can see how it probably reduces clothing wear also.

Gordon

 

[strongenough78]

Ahhhh ok. That I never knew.