One of our local thrift stores had this portable last week. Don't need it; couldn't resist. It was so pretty and because of its Harvest Gold cabinet it stood out like a daffodil in a late winter lawn.

The innards look to be in pretty good shape; I was especially pleased to see that the unicouple and hoses were intact and flexible.

The thing weighs a ton and a half. Wrestling it from the truck into my house did me in for the day. As a bonus, Ed, the proprietor, very nice guy, threw in a Hoover (my favorite type of Hoover convertible):

Home and in its spot. Needs some TLC and my favorite part, clean-up. A little disappointment: I thought a dishwasher this old would have a real, honest to G butcher block top (did any of them?), but it's laminate. Good quality laminate, but laminate.

The inside of the unit was a bit of a mess, with the last dose of powdered dishwasher detergent solidly cemented inside the dispenser. Fortunately, it looks like the dispensers are operational, but I always wonder why people put these things on the floor for sale without running them through at least a quick cycle to get rid of all the previous owner's crap. A generous pour of boiling water got rid of the last bits of powder and got the dispenser to move and work. There's a bit of scale dripping down the center of the door that I'll get rid of with a carefully application of lime-away because the tank still has a decent finish and I don't want to dull it. I took a couple of pictures of the rating plate but none of the numbers were in focus. For those interested:

Serial number: M-40678

Spec. : 17408 (What the H is this??)

Model number: KDS-56 ( an early iteration without a "Soak" cycle and with a "Heavy Soil Cycle" instead and I'm glad of that.)

I'd like to meet the jackass that decided that the buttons on many years of Superbas should be segregated into "Daily" and "Party" use; always thought that was pretentious and lame. If they had to have those two categories, they should have been sorted differently according to me. Instead of:

Daily Use:

Full Cycle

Heavy Cycle

Sani Cycle

Rinse and Hold

Party:

Light Soil

Plate Warm

Cancel Drain

It shoulda been:

Daily Use:

Full Cycle

Light Soil Cycle

Rinse and Hold

Cancel Drain

Party:

Heavy Soil

Sani Cycle

Plate Warm

I know, I know, who cares? I had a little extra time on my hands this evening. See y'all at the next score.

Nice that you saved it.

I'm looking at KitchenAids again because one of my dishwasher pet peeves is their general inability to produce plastic ware that's both clean and not covered with water at the end of the cycle. With the intense broiling coil of the early Mobile Maids, they come out dry but melted in spots, and with normal machines they are always wet. I'm wondering if the forced-air drying on the KA's (which is pointless for china and glass) will yield better results. I'm beginning to think there should be specially designed dishwashing machines and dishwashing detergents for plastics. I'm going to try a trial run with the machine today to see:

• If it works
• How well it works
• How long it takes to heat water for the Sani-Cycle (I'm getting tired of dishwashers that need more than an hour to do the job)

Does anyone have a Use and Care Manual for the 16 series? There doesn't seem to be one in the Ephemera library.

Hi Ken, I can't believe that the top is a Formica laminate style top on that DW, I just parted out a KDS-58 and it had a real maple hard wood top. It should be real solid strips of maple glued together, if you lift the top and look at the bottom you can get a better idea of the construction.

Nice score, Ken!  I always wondered about the 'Party' cycles, too but I guess the Light Soil was chosen as you could probably get away with a short wash cycle if you had a load to run immediately after a meal and needed to get the machine emptied again for the next load as soon as possible.  This was before people with multiple dishwashers came along, I guess.... LOL 

I'm kinda surprised that the 'butcher block' top on this one is laminate.  Is it possible that a real wood one was an option?  The KDS54 portable I just got has a real piece of wood on top of it and I remember well that the 1978 GE Contessa portable my folks bought had a real-wood top, even though it was a MOL model.  

I share your views about plasticware and the bottom broiler in the GE machines - I'll have to do some experimentation with my 'new' KA as well and see how that does with the drying.  I'll bet that forced-air drying system will do the trick.  

Enjoy your new toy!!

Seems to me Cascade or someone had a plastics cleaner to use in the dishwasher.  I don't know if it's still around anymore.  I don't think you'll find the Flow Thru air drying in the Kitchen Aid gives much better results.  The few pieces of plastic I still own (got rid of a lot with the whole plastics scare) come out of my 20 with some water on them even if I use the SaniCycle and the heated dry.  Every thing else comes out beautiful.

I think I may be wrong about the butcher block top. A corner of it chipped off in such a way that it looked like a piece from a strip of laminate, but after cleaning it up several times I'm beginning to think it's the real thing. It would explain why this "portable" dishwasher (actually, it's a "convertible") is so G-D heavy.

I guess it's a fact of plastic chemistry that water will bead on its surface but it would sure be nice if somebody could invent a rinse agent that would allow it to sheet off of it. I'll bet there's some automobile treatment out there that does that.

I was about to take the new toy through a trial run when I discovered, fortunately, that the drain hose had detached from its base. Now I have to play circus strong man, tip the whole G-D thing over and reconnect it. I will say this, none of the manufacturers of these portable/convertible machines gave the poor housewife more than a couple of usable inches of hose to make the connection.

Just like a man.

Wow, that old girl cleaned up nicely!  I think this is an early 16 as it doesn't have the Soak cycle.  Mark (kenmore71) knows the ins-and-outs on the cycle differences between the two after dragging home an early 16 several years ago.

Ben