Yes this was differently a Galesburg built refrigerator , these were fairly reliable but crude and noisy refs.

They were prone to all kinds of broken interior plastic parts worse of which the inner door panels would crack and break loose where they were attached to the outer steel and the door seals would loose the ability to stay in place.

The plastic Flex-Tray IMs were also a major problem, most owners gave up on having a working IM after a few repairs on it.

John L.

Like this one?

What I most remember about Admiral is the large sign along I294, in the area of O'Hare airport.

I remember that the first time you got a summer heat wave in San Jose you'd see a parade of Admiral Duplex refrigerators come in for repair. The service guys would make jokes about them. That king-sized one was no fun to pick up for the shop or return afterwards. Not heavy, just big and bulky. 

I don't remember what the warm-weather problems were with those Duplex fridges. I never repaired refrigeration (oh maybe a light switch on a trade-in) and of course I was forbidden to work on customer's appliances. Let's face it, you wouldn't want your new purchase to be fixed by a high school kid. Like the circus elephant that helps put up the tent, I got to help with pick-up and delivery of most hospitalized stuff and clean off any fingerprints or "perm-a-gum" residue the technician left. 

I never saw a great Admiral refrigerator , may they were better before 1955, but by the late 50s they always were full of cheap plastic parts that book easily, they were not even close to the quality of Frigidaire, GE and Whirlpool-Coldspot.

I remember one of these big SXSs that one of our customers had, It had 18 electric heaters in it, when our customer gave up on it in the early 80s and bought a Bottom Freezer WP from us she could not believe how much her power bill dropped I imagine our power company shut down a power plant when that thing was scrapped, LOL.

I never saw a Magic Chef Gas range that was worth a dam after around 1970 [ and we won't even mention MC electric ranges ] MC gas ranges were never as good as Hardwick, Caloric, Tappan.

There Was No Reason For Maytag to buy these companies over MTs period of ownership they did not improve these products at all, the only thing they did was cheapen them further and ruin Maytags reputation.

Maytag could still be a strong laundry brand if they had just stayed with building W&Ds and commercial laundry products [ Speed Queen has done quite well doing this ]

At one point MT spent 160 million on the Galesburg factory and the refrigerators that came out were worst than before. One of the many things they did was switching to plastic hinges on their top freezer refs, we used to have customers when they opened the loaded ref door have the whole thing fall off and fly across the kitchen floor, more than a few people were injured when the door fell on their foot. Even to this day I have never seen another refrigerator with plastic door hinges.

John L.

I remember years ago that GE had a side by side fridge that was about 30 cubic feet, bragging it was the largest made.  There may have been a Kenmore version too.  GE Appliances now, their largest is 25 cubic feet.  Was the Admiral larger?  Did the Admiral maybe compete against Sub Zero, GE Monogram, Viking?

I think the GE SXSs of 20+ years ago were the largest capacity Refs of all time, but the space inside was not the most convenient to use. 

The 48" wide SZs, Kitchenaid builtins etc are not quite as large inside but much the space is more usable because of layout.

Reply #11, the Admiral was lost or broken, I think they likely realized that the POS did not work and junked it.

John L.

Maybe the GE refrigerators called Arctica were the largest ones.  Didn't GE have a lot of trouble with them?  I notice GE Appliances today has smaller SXS refrigerators (would they be Haier models now?).