GE did even more to preheat the clothes before drying. When HOT wash water was selected, the rinse temperature sequence was: cold for the first rinse, warm for the second rinse, then hot for the third rinse.
The first 29 inch wide Kenmore and WP combos had a top spin speed of 500 rpm. They also had no dryer lint filter, just a separator system with a damper that recirculated most of the heated air during the heating of the wash water and the unheated air during the rinsing and exhausted most of it during drying, recirculating only the amount needed to separate the lint. In theory, the initial one minute purge before the machine began to fill would wash the lint from the last drying period out of the machine. The tranny was set up so that the pump and blower would operate at the same time allowing hot air to circulate through the drum during wash to boost the water temperature. It also permitted the heater to run during the final spin except for Wash 'n Wear and Delicates to preheat the clothes and enhance the water extraction. The spin was divided into two parts without the preliminary intermittent spins of later machines. What the original machine did after the partial drain from the 3rd rinse was ramp up to the high spin speed as soon as the balancing system allowed . Then, after 4 or 5 minutes of spin, it slowed to a tumble and did this little spurting of water called the "Peel Off Rinse." This was done by recirculating water that was retained in the machine to make the balancing mechanism work. This little spurting of water from the filter stream opening was done to loosen the clothes from the drum so that they would tumble, but not make them as wet as when the first spin started. After the load had time to tumble a bit, the machine went into another high speed spin with the heat on. Then it came out of spin, drained the balance tanks and reservoir, paused a minute and then started drying. Because the clothes had been redistributed between spins, they fell away from the drum and tumbled with no problem.
The trouble with this system was the clogging of the water system in the machine when either too much dryer lint accumulated for the purge to wash out of the machine or too much lint got in the water during the washing and rinsing of a very linty load. Add to this the little bits of hard matter that landed in the filter and trapped lint so that it would not flush out and you begin to see how vulnerable the system was. The lint filter was a little star-shaped thing like a kitchen sink strainer in the bottom of the sump. It was accessed from a locking, hinged panel in the drum. If the machine was full of wet laundry when a clog was noticed, the wet stuff had to be removed, then the panel opened and the lint strainer cleaned. Before putting the load back in, you had to run the machine for a minute or so to get the rest of the lint out of the system and clean the strainer again. If this was during a hot wash, insulated rubber gloves were needed and many owners were upset. So all of those machines were retrofitted to have a dryer lint screen. In the retrofitting, the damper that either was mostly open for dry or mostly closed during the wash, rinse, spin part of the cycle was eliminated. The transmission was changed so that it either pumped or ran the blower so the water heating and spin preheat were eliminated and the top spin speed was reduced to to 400 rpm. The two high speed spins were retained for a while, but were later modified so that the first spin period had the intermittent low speed spin and tumble periods followed by the 4 minute high speed spin. Subsequent machines had the wash filter moved to the front of the machine behind the lower panel. It was only because of the money that Sears brought into Whirlpool that the redesign from the BIG 33 inch wide machine to the 29 inch wide combo was financially possible. They both took a hit on the retrofitting, but survived.
