The washer is an a702. Nice find. I may call on this myself. As for the color on the Maytag emblem, it's standard practice for the emblem to have the same background color as the machine it's mounted on, but look closely and you can see the gold colored trim on the M and the surrounding ring. On my YA700 the background color is yellow, so this looks normal to me.

I spoke to the seller of the CA702 washer this afternoon. I'll be heading down next week to have a look at it and with any luck I'll be bringing it home, though I have no intention of keeping it. It hasn't been used in quite a while, so I'll give it good going through and then pass it along. I know there are folks that really like this color, I just don't happen to be one of them. But I'd hate to see this go to the scrapper so an intervention is in order.

After a failed attempt last week that got me withing fifteen miles of the machine I was finally able to get it today. Overall it seems to be in nice shape. So far all of the original parts are there except for the lint filter assembly. The owner wasn't a bleach user so it has none of the corrosion so often found around the bleach dispenser fill port or lid, which is nice, but there are two small chips in the porcelain on the inner tub that go down to the black porcelain undercoat, and the agitator has a long but narrow crack in the barrel. It's also going to need a new spline adapter, as the one that's there has lost its grip on the agitator. Basically it's in decent shape and is finished in a rather hard to find color. I don't know if the agitator can be saved yet, but if it can't I have a short barreled Powerfin to put in its place. So for now I'll go ahead and clean it up as best I can and then see what I can do with it. As I mentioned earlier, I don't plan to keep this one.

Cordoba Brown is far from my favorite color, but this machine is from my favorite period for Maytags. I really like this cabinet style. I just hope I'll be able to find it a good home.

it's looking pretty good. Nearly all of the blemishes on the paint are right at the surface and come off pretty easily, leaving a very nice looking original finish. There is some etching around the bleach dispenser fill port and back by the lid hinges, but Brasso is slowly powering through that. I've had a look inside the cabinet, and though there is some corrosion that'll need to be dealt with, it's nothing serious. The worst potential problem at the moment is the damper assembly. It's as dry as it can be and doesn't want to move at all. Hopefully there isn't any damage to its polished aluminum surface since that'll take the darn thing out of service. I have an NOS replacement, but I refuse to use it on this machine, so if the damper is toast the machine will be parted.

The damper assembly can be seen in the photo below with the red arrow pointing at it. It supports the weight of the wash tub and allows the entire affair to wobble about a bit during spin cycles without damage. The inner surface (which is hidden from view in this photo) is highly polished and sits on three felt damper pads saturated with lube, thus allowing the wobble. When those pads dry out as these clearly have, movement of the damper against the dried out pads can cause irreparable damage to the polished damper surface. In other words, they'll chew it up. As new dampers for these older machines have long since passed into legend and mythology, the only realistic source for them now is another machine. So if this one is shot, unless a donor can be found the machine is toast.

It would be a shame if that were to happen though, since this really is turning out to be a nice looking machine in otherwise great condition.

Thanks hippiedoll, Phil and Jason, for the compliments. And since I didn't make the trip to get it with the idea that it'd be parted out, please keep your fingers crossed for me. Based on the way things feel I've a hunch I'm going to need a bit of luck here.