I've seen several machines like that. My boot in my GE looked similar and had become very hard. Water likes to stand in all of those rust spots and I guess over time it eats away at the porcelain and attacks the metal. That lip will also flex a lot when the metal becomes compromised and that only accelerates the problem.

Sorry to see that, do you plan on sourcing another outer tub?

-Tim

Great video Mike, I love the fact that you tested it right on the truck as soon as you got it home.  I've done that, sometimes us washer boys just can't wait to see it run!

Mike, I've fixed many of those holes in the outer tub successfully with the Bondo. Just use it fast, it sets up very quickly. Clean the rubber boot with oven cleaner spray then rinse it well and clean it with Lime-away. Works wonders on many of those parts.

Whoever designed that first generation of plastic hub cover deserves to have to pry it off of a 100 year-old machine to enter Heaven. I can't help but think that GE repairmen had a dedicated tool for its removal. Even when you know how it works it is a difficult and frustrating job.

Can't wait to see the machine in action with its new pimped-up spiral activator+mini tub.

out so easily. Those are the hardest bolts to release in Applianceville! Now you're on your way to Filter-Flo Freedom!

If you have the option, I'd go for the replacement tub; you're 90% there already and it will be so much stronger in the end = many problem free washdays ahead.

Very nice, Mike!  I've been doing the exact same repair on a FF recently too - the tub flange and drain area of the tub rust out terrible.  (leave those lids up homemakers!)  I used POR 15 and silicone before on these outer tubs and it worked great.  Since the outer tub doesn't really have much stress of the moving transmission and basket it holds just fine. 

I just bought a mess of GE boots on ebay for $7 each - newly made of silicone and they are beautiful!  This pic is after the repair and new boot.  Hopefully the new boot won't degrade like the old rubber did - mine was the same thing, the boot was OK but the tub rusted right at the flange where water stayed around the boot-lip.

Best of luck with the new GE set - they are in very nice shape!

Unless there are very large holes, your outer tub should work just fine for many years to come.  The picture I posted above is an oddity in that it looks as though there is rust all over the surface of the lower regions when in fact, that was a reflection or a flash anomaly - it's as clean and blue as the rest of the tub except where I used the POR15 around the flange and the drain/pressure switch outlets.

Good luck, Mike, I'm sure you'll make it work and it will be as good as new when you're done with it.

It looks like you are really giving this washer a good going over Mike i am sure that you will get it running well. The brown stains on the inside of the cabinet are most likely a bad pump seal, most often when its a water leak from somewhere else being thrown around by the pump driver it doesn't have that dark a rust stain.

One thing I don't understand [ and this goes to everyone that has a GE FF washer I am not picking on you Mike ] is why on earth you don't just replace the complete transmission when you are doing all this work. Excellent rebuilt complete transmissions are still available for often less than $100.00 with a one year warranty. And everyone that has a working GE FF washer that they expect to keep running for the foreseeable future should have at least one of these rebuilt transmissions in reserve. And if we don't buy these now they will go out of production even sooner. The transmission and the 2SP clutch were the two most troublesome major parts of GE FF washers and to of the most difficult to rebuild and good new or rebuilt ones are still available.

It wasn't until I had my first Maytag (an A206 with helical drive) that it occurred to me that Consumer Reports wasn't as objective as one would think or expect. Although I wasn't a CU technician, my interest in these machines, as with a lot of us, was serious and I had enough experience in the laundry room to judge some of the differences for myself between the basic Maytag which kept garnering top place in the CU reports and the Filter-Flo's that consistently placed down in the middle of their ratings.

My first impression was that the Maytags, although I thought they were elegant machines, were overrated. Our GE's had always done a clearly superior job at cleaning clothing and also at rinsing, something that wasn't even measured by CU. The Maytags weren't bad, overall, but the agitation was ineffective with big loads, the kind of loads that everyone but the lady of the household would subject the family washing machine to normally and frequently. Our GE never slowed down or stalled with big loads the way I've seen many a Tag do. Maytag rinsing has always been skimpy. Again, if you have a serious load in those machines, you are lucky if they'll turn over even once during that 2 minute rinse. The Filter-flo rinse on the normal cycle was always about 4 minutes long and, again, that powerful activation moved that laundry up and down with ease. GE's lint filter was also a better design than the Maytags, but the more I think about lint, the more it's a non-issue.

I think this comparison is fair, also for Whirlpools although I was always disappointed by how ineffective extraction was with the BD pools and kenmores.

True, Maytags are engineered beautifully, dependable and quiet. But I always thought Filter-Flo's were much better than what Consumer Reports reported

and never looked dirty! They do clean well and rinse well too. When the clutch goes-noisy as hell! A real screamer!

the cheapest I see right now are $15 of the 3 dealers on there.

The ebay store I bought them from was TexasT-Resale, he's still there but no boots now.  I found 7 for $35 + shipping. 

Cuz I needed 7??

The one you mentioned for $15 appears to be the same as mine - luscious silicone rubber.

(I'm sure you know this but these are only for the perforated tub machines, the earlier ones had a different flange and extra lip on the bottom of the boot for the solid-tub washers)

I couldn't get to sleep one night last week so I got up and watched your video which relaxed me completely. I loved it. All the graphics and the narration--perfect.

Especially the water throw--great that you filmed it. Who has a more exciting or rapid spin drain than a vintage GE. Again, your work is spectacular.

Michael:  Thank you so much.  I am very happy that you liked my video.  LOL - now I know that I can really put folks to sleep with my "teaching mode" voice.

UPDATE:  Actually, I have not done anything else since last posting, except get the machines off of my truck and into the Solarium, where it will be much easier to work on.  Contrary to some excellent advice (above) to replace the outer tub and transmission, I am going to start a restoration of the outer tub by first applying the POR-15 soon.  And keep the present transmission for the time being.  I want to keep as much original iron in the machine as possible.

Thanks to all.

Mike