Thread Number: 29751
POD 07-27-10 WCI "Frigidaire"
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Post# 452279   7/27/2010 at 07:54 (4,993 days old) by Tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

As troubling as the whole ad is, this jumps out:

"Lid lock prevents opening of washer lid when agitator is in spin cycle."





Post# 452285 , Reply# 1   7/27/2010 at 08:08 (4,993 days old) by Frigilux (The Minnesota Prairie)        

frigilux's profile picture
I think it says a lot for the personal growth of AW members that no one considers jumping off the roof when this ad comes up as the picture-of-the-day, LOL.

I'd love to find one of these first WCI-made Frigidaires in mint shape.

It's weird to think that WCI/Electrolux has been making Frigidaire washers almost as long as GM made them.


Post# 452288 , Reply# 2   7/27/2010 at 08:32 (4,993 days old) by gmmcnair (Portland, OR)        
Disturbing....

gmmcnair's profile picture
...very disturbing. Should have been titled "When Good Washers Go Bad."

Post# 452291 , Reply# 3   7/27/2010 at 09:09 (4,993 days old) by mrb627 (Buford, GA)        
Model differences.

mrb627's profile picture
What was so un-special about the low end model that it had a 210 agitation arc while the others were 186 degrees?

Malcolm


Post# 452295 , Reply# 4   7/27/2010 at 09:16 (4,993 days old) by lesto (Atlanta)        

Blasphemy. The very idea of calling a WCI horror a Frigidaire!

Post# 452298 , Reply# 5   7/27/2010 at 09:27 (4,993 days old) by cfz2882 (Belle Fourche,SD)        

looks like the BOL version is franklin with westinghouse for
the upper models,westinghouse version stopped production
around 1988,so all franklin after that.
have seen some of the earlier westy versions with a window lid


Post# 452311 , Reply# 6   7/27/2010 at 11:10 (4,993 days old) by mixfinder ()        
Propoganda

Its like hearing and reading mind schlock to numb your senses.

Post# 452315 , Reply# 7   7/27/2010 at 11:32 (4,993 days old) by combo52 (50 Year Repair Tech Beltsville,Md)        
POD 7-27-10

combo52's profile picture
Those dryers did not even deserve to be plugged in they were among the worst dryers I have ever dealt with. If I find one new in the box one day I wouldn't even attempt to use it, the washers were a little better but I would still put them in last place for reliability and performance in the early 1980s.

Post# 452330 , Reply# 8   7/27/2010 at 13:20 (4,993 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
Franklin/WH

roto204's profile picture
That's correct, cfz2882. These were straight-vane Westinghouse models. I had one next to a GM 1-18 for dramatic effect in 2005 at the wash-in. Fun and splashy, but people who had GM 1-18s before must have absolutely screamed when they bought one of these. Though the control panel was the same, the cabinet was a quarter shallower, which was just a harbinger of disappointment to come. If the 1-18 held eighteen pounds and could deal with our king-sized comforter with ease, this machine rated more like fourteen pounds and the comforter would have been out the top of the tub and preventing the lid from closing.

These might have been marginally nicer if they'd used the Westy ramped agitator. The straight-vane was cute and had fun removable upper fins, since it had a lint cartridge in the agitator column as well (some did, anyway). As WCI metamorphosed through the eighties, the Westinghouse design and Franklin mechanism flip-flopped from top- and bottom-of-the-line, respectively, and closed out the eighties with the Westies being relegated to the bottom of the ecosystem. Some truly ugly Montgomery Wards machines of the time had a black ramped agitator and plastic tub, with only a timer dial. By the late eighties, my Frigidaire was a Franklin, with the lame little PerpetuaTwirl agitator with four very short, curled-at-the-skirt vanes that worked with the indexing tub to twirl, twirl, twirl the load around and turn it over maybe once in fourteen minutes.

Both the Westinghouse and Franklin incarnations were an absolute pain in the ass to work on. It took me two days to finish replacing the belt on my Franklin, after using fascinating new obscenities I'd never even thought of before. The Westinghouses were full of incompatible metals that went into aluminum housings, so you were sure to shear off bolts everywhere you worked. They also glued the hoses to the pump and tub fittings even though they additionally used clamps, which I never understood, and made working on them completely frustrating.

The Franklin design put the pump (and water) on the underside of the motor, but Westinghouse perched the pump on top of the motor and put a plastic shield under it just-in-case. Stellar design.

We found a few of these over the years, and tried to strip them for parts when they failed, but they crumbled in our hands and ended up in the trash.



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