Updates to the '57 GE

[cadman]

One thing the Princess was crying out for was a lighted dial...and now that's been taken care of!

After work I picked up several different LED replacement lamps to experiment with. Because of the limited space above the timer there's not room for a C7-sized lamp, (and I'd worry about melting the dial with an incandescent, anyway). Anything off to the side lost too much light. No room in front of the dial and no real room behind it at the center.

What ended up working the best was a G8-based halogen replacement (the kind used in undercounter puck lights). 2.5w and 170 Lumens meant I could locate the unit elsewhere and still get good brightness. It's the thickness of a couple quarters and has lots of concentrated light. After playing around I found a spot that gave the best effect and used a piece of 12ga wire and a nut as a mount. The leads are soldered onto the timer lugs and everything is completely reversible for originality. With the heat and steam in this area I wouldn't trust any kind of tape so the leads are heat-shrink wrapped and the mount is mechanical.

 

[cadman]

Here's a shot of it mounted...Too bad GE went away from the colored dial!

 

[cadman]

And the end result! Not having any dirty dishes handy I decided to bake a batch of cookies. Let the Frigidaire have some fun while the GE cleans up! -C

 

[appnut]

Outstanding!!!  You are going to get spoiled very quickly having a dishwasher now!!!

 

[barcoboy]

Just curious... why is the orange wire connected to the timer spade labelled "Brown", while the "Orange" spade isn't connected?

 

[washdaddy]

i was wondering about the orange wire myself.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

Bravo! Looks great!

 

 

[turquoisedude]

OOOOO!  AAAAAH!  Cory, that's just the touch this machine needed.  Please consider it a compliment when I do the same to my '59 Princess and possibly also to the '57 Mobile Maid!!

 

[cadman]

Paul, I was hoping this would help others out : ) It makes a big difference IMO.

Regarding that orange wire...I think I see what's going. The way the machine works right now is that the timer will stop if you unlatch the door lock. Looking at the schematic, it appears that if the orange wire were moved to the orange terminal, the timer would continue to run to end of cycle while power to everything else would be cut. There's no telling how long this has been wired this way but I think I prefer being able to interrupt the cycle without the timer advancing. Maybe some other owners can weigh in on how theirs operate.

I'm not sure what the brown terminal connects to electrically- on the diagram it's simply unused. -C

*Edit: The calrod is also in parallel with the timer motor so it wouldn't be a good idea to power it with the drawer open. Perhaps this was a last minute revision.

[this post was last edited: 2/17/2015-09:01]

 

[swestoyz]

Looks great Cory!  You've opened a whole world of lighted delight to GE owners world wide. 

 

[bajaespuma]

Lovin' the light;; you're going to have to do a whol

Cory, thanks for the pictures and I'm sad to say that I don't know the actual answer to either of your questions but I suspect that plastic was still in its infancy and very expensive; also the easy answer is that that's the way the previous models' round silverware baskets were constructed so they just went with that protocol. Then, for 3 years, they went with an all-coated wire design while they were working the kinks out of an all-plastic basket that would exist to this day.

Changing the dials to all-white made no sense at all and, for a while, the dials on some of the TOL built-ins were white and blue. CU criticized those large dials with their tiny windows so GE scrapped them altogether when they scrapped the top loader built-ins in 1962.

 

[davortho10]

Looks great! Very cool. My parents had a built in top loader in the house we lived in till I was 5. I have some slight memories of it. My mother did tell me later that the dial had to be replaced a couple of times because it melted slightly and warped. It was fairly new too, they built the house in '57 and we moved in '63.

 

[bajaespuma]

IIRC the brown lead is there for the Rinse Dispenser which was a standard feature on the '57 Empress but was an optional accessory on the Princess. I have an Electrical Schematic somewhere that illustrates the connection. When I find it I'll post it. On every GE Pull-out and Mobile Maid I have, everything shuts down when the machine is open. What I don't remember is that on the built-ins you can move the latch to "CLOSED" as opposed to "ON"; I can't tell you what that does.

I'm very much enjoying these threads. Be careful of that Calrod; if this is in fact a 1957 machine, that coil is rated at 750 Watts. Don't put anything that's even remotely burnable, scorch-able or melt-able, anywhere near it on the lower rack. Also, if you plan to use this machine for a while you might want to wrap the wires on the lower rack that are directly above the coil with aluminum foil. The heat from the coil is enough to cook the vinyl off of the wire in time. I think GE offered something like a re-call in 1958 to retro-fit the heating units because of the number of service calls they received. I guess this wasn't a problem in the earlier units because the tanks weren't coated with Plastisol and the configuration of the racks was just different enough that they didn't suffer the same fate. The good news here is that you could connect your machine to cold water and you'll still end up with a piping hot wash.

The following schematic is for a later SP-40 machine; you get the idea. If and when I find the schematic for the SU-60P, I'll post it.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Heat and the Plastisol

The earlier machines with a Calrod element and a dry cycle also ran the fan during dry because the motor ran the timer so there was less buildup of heat under the lower rack and silver basket. 1957 was the first convection dry machine.

I often wondered why our neighbor's machine had that checker pattern of dots around the wash portion on the timer.

 

[cadman]

Oh, there's definitely some GE funny business going on here. They made some serious wiring changes between the 57 and 59 rollouts and I have a theory as to why.

Does anyone out there have the owners manual for a 57 rollout? I'm curious as to how they say one should start the machine operating....

And thanks for the advice, guys. I'll try to use this machine sparingly. Now I have visions of Oneida cutlery spiraling into disaster! -C

 

[jetaction]

Love the lighted dial.....

I must have one! LOL

 

[appnut]

they say one should start the machine operating....

I don't understand Cory.  You lock the machine with the sliding lock all the way to the right and it automatically starts. 

 

[bajaespuma]

I think the checker pattern of dots was a visual representation of detergent granules being distributed, appropriate for the WASH section of the cycle. Interesting that it appears on my B&W dial JPEG illustration but didn't come out in the exported upload of the blue and red dial. It's there in the Adobe original. Computers is just crazy.

I think there's an operator's manual for the '57 Princess in the Ephemera library.

 

[cadman]

Those dots do make it easier to see what the machine is doing without having to get right up on it.

Bob, I've got a little something up my sleeve but want to see what GE instructed on paper before I put my foot in my mouth. I'm trying to determine if my mod was done by GE for convenience, for safety, or at a customer's request.

I know the MM instructions say to close the lid to start operation, which is fine for a top loader that automatically pops up, gets unplugged and wheeled away, but did GE apply the same logic to the rollouts?

Hmm, I can't seem to find a '57 Princess manual in auto-e...