My brother Jeff and I had at least two dozen of these apart for the same type of cleaning over the years. I never noticed any difference between the gas and electric machines when it comes to lint buildup. But as Tom mentioned the machine that you have probably could have benefited from softer water or more detergent so minerals would not build up for the lint to stick on.

The porcelain parts of these combos usually fared pretty well, so the overall condition is what we usually would see under all the lint and mineral build up. These machines were easy to over-suds so many users used way too little detergent rather than trying to find and use the proper low sudsing detergents, so we did see some pretty nasty machines.

I have one of the last LKM combos in our collection that was made in the fall of 1971, I got it in late 1977 from a guy that hulled away old appliances for Sears. It is very badly mineraled up as he said that the customer only used Arm&hammer powered detergent. One of these days I will get around to restoring it and converting it to gas for my home laundry room. But I know it is going to need a lot of cleaning.