It's out there and it's spreading.... Black timer motor death.   Those old round Ingraham type timer motors could fall victim to it at any moment it would seem.  One day, your beloved 60-year old washer is happily spinning and draining, then the next time you try it, it won't budge beyond 'fill'.

I apologize for the cheesy melodrama, but I now have 5 vintage machines (washers and dishwashers mostly) which are sidelined because the timer motor has failed.   I have attempted to substitute motors unsucessfully in the past, but this past weekend, I had a thought:  would it be possible to have new timer motors manufactured?  I'll guess that this may have been investigated in the past but never got far due to the quantities required to make a manufacturer be interested in doing this.   However, with the number of collectors here, it may be possible to reach a minimum order point. 

One thing I have never really been ceratin about either are the specs for these timer motors (other than voltage).  How fast do they turn is the one question I've never been able to find an answer to.   I realize that there may also be different kinds of drive gears and the drive pinion shaft may need to be longer on some motors to drive a specific escapement.  

I know the idea has been explored for the infamous Westy Slant-Front door boots and never came to fruition, but maybe if we put our heads together, we can figure out a way to get a supply of replacement timer motors somehow. 

Robert, if this post is not appropriate for this forum, please do not hesitate to move it.  I wasn't 100% sure, so I took a chance on putting it in Imperial.  

I'll second John's post.  I've used the later style, smaller, silver motors on the earlier timers and they worked just fine for Malory timers.  In fact I've seen several Maytag rebuilt AMP timers that had a replacement silver motor on them after they were refurbished.  Thankfully these later motors are plentiful on timers that can be hand pretty cheaply on eBay, etc.

The only major modification that you may need to do is to convert the wiring from a spade connector (later motor) to a Douglas connector (round pin, earlier motor), and possibly use shorter screws to hold the motor body in place on the escapement if required.

Ben

OH, this is good news!  I need like 5 of those, though. And I'm getting paranoid about future failures.... 

John, do you have any in stock??  

I collect Telechron rotor powered devices. Until fairly recently, replacements were a fortune. Repair (the real thing, not the drill a dirty hole and pour in some blue 3in1) was worth every penny, but, gosh, expensive!

So - what I've learned that applies to timer motors:

If it's the field coil (windings), frequently there's something out there, even 'new', which will work. Precision here is not needed, 'good enough for gub'ment werk' will do. 

If it's the dogs, didn't we figure out that the nylon in some high-temp melt glues worked quite well? I know I did a set for an ancient (it was even avocado) Maytag A10x and they lasted six months of several uses a day until I finally found a real set.

If it's the gears, they're almost never stripped, just gummed up to death. Dratted lubricants in the pre-synthetic days were trash. Many (but not all) lithium/teflon greases turned out to be pre-cursers to a material which would put the densest granite to shame.

Cleaning out the frozen up oil/grease and lightly lubricating will often make them work again.

3D-Print shops are now reasonable. A damaged gear or part can be done quickly and not that expensively, relatively speaking. This will, ultimately, be the answer to many of our parts problems. Already in use in many industries.

Finally, micro-processor control (dare I say Arduino?) is no longer a black-book for those of us who have degrees in IT. I've set up simple control systems twice now when there was nothing else to be done and both times the unobtainium parts showed up on fleabay within a week. That's powerful majick.