Weekend of Washing, Baking and Thrifting!

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gansky1

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Kelly (mixfinder) came through town on his way to visit family in Kansas on Friday. We spent most of the day talking, baking, washing and pouring over magazines and brochures of appliances gone by. Ben came in Friday evening and we had a small dinner party of lasagna and of course, baked goodies by the masterful hand of Kelly!

1-2-3-4 red cake and custard frosting being started in the 12c at the same time bread dough going in the KithenAid.

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Look at the gorgeous cake! Kelly is a master of the 7-minute frosting, it was outstanding!

(take note of how clean the kitchen is after he finishes, when Ben posts some pictures of our antics in here on Saturday night you'll see our skills aren't even in the same league!)

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We went to a couple of estate sales, the farmer's market downtown and thrifting on Saturday morning. Ben and I nearly fell over when we found this - 1987 Whirlpool DU8900T dishwasher. What a minty-fresh machine this is - just a tiny bit of hard water in the porcelain tank but otherwise in beautiful condition.

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The money-shot. Very nice shape. A bit of touch-up on the rack vinyl needed and it should be good as new. Our garage-testing revealed it works perfectly. I've always wanted a Whirlpool to play with as I've heard so many good things about these Power-Clean machines but have only ever had one of the axial-motor, wash-tower BOL units.

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Saturday afternoon, Kelly departed for Kansas and Ben and I set to work on my Maytag combination washer-dryer. There was a catastrophic electrical disaster with the 240-volt side of the timer and the last time he was here, we took apart the timer and spent more than a few hours repairing and rebuilding it with JB Weld, tiny washers and new rivets. Looking at the repair, one might think it was a death-wish to plug it in again but we felt confident that it would work. With the crucial help of Cory's electrical analysis, we put relays in the heater circuit to keep the current out of the timer in hopes of preventing another meltdown. The current for the heater runs not only through the timer, but also the fabric/machine control switch on the panel and even the end-of-cycle chime! Ben will likely share more of the pictures from the process, but here he is on the floor disconnecting the line from the terminal block behind the machine.

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Open top - fortunately, we didn't have to remove the cabinet as I did three times when it first came. Most everything we needed was accessible from here and the back.

You can see the lights on behind the timer - it works and there's no current on the machine itself so it's safe to touch it, Don!

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Celebratory shaky-camera 8 second video!

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Thanks Greg for sharing those fun pictures!! I am so glad that Kelly was able to come for a visit. I know you guys must have had a great time. You know I am going to expect a lesson in making that frosting when I get there!! Loved the video too but somehow I kept waiting for the Maytag Combo to jump out at us!! LOL
 
Looks like a fun weekend. Congrats on getting your combo up and running again, that really is an amazing machine. What is the machine to the left of the combo?
 
Cool!

Looks like you all had a great time!

Hope to meet up with Ben next time he is in town.

I love that westinghouse! Looks like it got a bit sudsy! ;)
 
wow Greg

Your new kitchen is georgeous, can't wait to come play there.
And I am so glad you got the Combo up and running again, that is such a unique machine and a terrific color too!

Now its bearing time for you no? I just had the motor stop in my TOL Bendix Duo this month so that has to come apart next month.

If it isn't one, its another!!

Cheers
jon & artey
 
What a great weekend! It was so nice to meet Kelly and spend some time @ Greg's - what an awesome host (as always!)

Wow - look at this mess, what sort of Tom-foolery is going on here? All for some...

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So - back to the Combo. This story starts last spring when Greg noticed a poof of smoke from the Maytag Combo! In September of last fall I headed to Omaha to then pick up a different Maytag combo in Kansas. Over that weekend we tore into Greg's timer.

What you see below was the handy work of some pretty intense current for the heater assembly. The terminal board should not look like this! Ultimately the chime circuit (15) is to blame here as full 220v runs through this area of the timer when the heater is activated.

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Wow!

Greg your kitchen is so nice! I always liked the darker look to kitchens. the counters are very nice! The wood is a perfect tone too!

Ben, great pictures!
 
For the most part, this timer was toast (no pun intended).

We figured it wouldn't hurt anything to try and repair the terminal boards with some JB Weld, which would cure to the fibers of the board and keep the contacts and terminals in place. Otherwise the other two solutions would be to:

1. Find a new timer. Doubtful.
2. Have the terminal board rebuilt from scratch. Can be done but would require the work to be farmed out

(or just part the machine out and donate the boot to me)

Somehow the JB Weld, along with some precision washers procured from the awesome Ace Hardware by Greg's, ended up being our saving grace. It may look sloppy in this photo, but it worked!! [this post was last edited: 8/9/2010-18:12]

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Over the winter we had Cory take a look at the Combo wiring to see if we could remove the heavy 220v current from the timer and push button assemblies. I wanted as little of current as possible to pass through our JB Weld handy work.

After some well placed questions on how the machine worked, etc., Cory came up with the following solution. Greg and I omitted the Chime SPDT relay for now as we wanted to see if we could get the timer working on the SPST heater relay.

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Fast forward to August 2010

Fast forward to this weekend: the next task was getting some relays to work in our favor. I found a great Power Relay from Grainger that fit the bill perfectly.

The SPST relay for the heater ended up being a Grainger part number 5ZH37, Omron PN: G7L-1A-TUB-J-CB-AC200/240.

The chime relay was a Grainger 1YDD7, or Omron PN: G2R-1-S-AC240(S).

Fit perfectly next to the fabric selector.

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Thankfully the heater and hi-limit thermostat were just ripe for the picking - no cabinet removal was necessary. YAY!

Thankfully Greg had a stash of double spaded jumpers available to bridge the heater.

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The lovely timer back in place with the lights on. You know what that means - everything worked!

I cleaned up the JB Weld to ensure it wouldn't ground or arch to another circuit in the timer before we installed the assembly.

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Is there a piece missing from the base of the maytag combo? What would it originally have looked like?
 
Stunning, Dazzlling, Riveting and Mind-numbing

With skill like that, certainly you gentlemen could have solved the Gulf oil leak if anybody had bothered to ask you!

Great to see Kelly out and about, an inspiration and hope to all of us, especially me. Many thanks.

Yes, Ben, 220 volts and that electric chair headgear contraption is SCARY, very scary, but exciting and fun nonetheless. DZZZZZZZT
 
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