These just popped up on the Rancho Mirage/Palm Springs Craigslist. Because I saw so very many of these come in for service I was never that impressed with them. They were new customer machines which I was not allowed to work on. I know I'm in the minority since so many members like them. They did seem to do an awfully good job and hold a large load. $300 for the pair. They certainly look well-cared for. 

I'm in the same boat with you! I hated those things when they were new. Nothing but problems, there were at least 2 in the shop at any time. Don't care for them now.

Saw way more washers than dryers. People would leave a screw, in a pocket, and the wash action more often than not would drive it into the bellows seal. Wipe out the bearings in the transmission.

I remember a neighborhood family having one of these washers that was probably a 1965 or so.  It made a pronounced thumping sound during agitation -- no surprise there -- but theirs was also a large family and the machine was likely overworked and overloaded a lot of the time with kids having to do their own laundry.  Still, I wasn't impressed.

Fast forward about 45 years, when I was visiting Nate in Tucson.  He had an early '60s machine going and allowed me to watch what was happening underneath.  I was really impressed with the design and how quietly it operated.  My opinion did a complete 180, but I still am not sure about reliability and the potential for user-created problems like Kenny mentioned above.

For $300, that's a nice set for a fan of these machines.  It seems that greater Palm Springs is producing a lot of nice low-use stuff with boomer parents' vacation homes changing hands.

These were very good washers overall, yes they were a little unusual and techs not trained on them often did not like them. 

Overall I would contend that the 1-18 was the most reliable FD automatic washer of their 5 different AW designs, the other reliable one was the 62-3 pulse-a-matic machines.

The 1-18 dryers were top performing dryer when everything was in excellent condition, but durability was not great, in the majority of cases the 1-18 washer outlasted the 1-18 dryers unless the customer hung much of the laundry out to dry, LOL.

Overall FD did not build highly durable dryers, their best dryers from a durability standpoint were the early Filteraters, their worst dryers were the mid to late 50s vented dryers, after that every thing they built was average to worse than average.

John L.

It's too bad those aren't Custom Imperials with lighted consoles. With the wood trim they were very attractive machines.

I'm not the "parts guru" but I suppose a thermostat would not be all that difficult to find. You might be able to locate a junked dryer and rob Peter to Pay Paul. At any rate, it's a beautiful day here today. I'd try bargaining with them since these have been listed for a few days and they live or have a second home in upscale Rancho Mirage.

...did you buy them? I had emailed the seller telling them I had placed a post on this site with a link to their listing and a photo. They emailed me back to tell me they were sold and to say thanks.

Joe, here's your answer: