Thread Number: 8634
Bendix economat 		[Down to Last]

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Post# 162365   10/24/2006 at 18:03 (6,386 days old) by robbiehotpoint ()        

Hi. I have been a member on here for a few months now and i have been fascinated by the Bendix economat. (aswell as every other machine on here lol) I was wondering if anyone could tell me some history of the machine as i have never seen anything like it before. Am i correct in thinking it has no spin cycle and the water is forced out in some way. If so how is this achieved and was it any good at extracting the water out of the clothes. Many thanx
Robbie




Post# 162394 , Reply# 1   10/24/2006 at 20:17 (6,386 days old) by gyrafoam (Wytheville, VA)        

I remember them well.
Most of the time with people angrily wringing out their clothes out by hand.

Essentially,air was pumped out of the machine via a disk on the inside of the lid and the rubber tub would collapse inwards towards the agitator. The agitator skirt had drain holes in it and what water was "squeezed" out of the clothes was pumped away.

When filling, the water would bubble up out of the center post of the agitator.
AND, the agitator was strangely similiar to Maytags early (Filter type) agitator. Of course, the Maytag did not fill from the center post of the agitator and did not have holes in the skirt----but the general shape and size was VERY similar.

Post# 162504 , Reply# 2   10/25/2006 at 01:06 (6,385 days old) by maytagbear (N.E. Ohio)        
Of course,

 when loading you had to be ultra careful, since the tub was a rubber(ish?) material. A forgotten screwdriver, a forgotten pen, and the tub would be history.

The vacuum pump was noisy, and the seal not particularly reliable. Plus, extraction, as mentioned above, was not stellar. Not even on a par with a relatively slow top-loader spin.


Most of this is recalled from the Consumer Reports article.


A noble experiment, none-the-less.


Lawrence/Maytagbear

Post# 162539 , Reply# 3   10/25/2006 at 07:37 (6,385 days old) by robbiehotpoint ()        

Thankyou, i never even thought about sharp objects like zips etc puncturing the drum. i couldnt imagine a lot of these machines were sold unless they were a cheaper option than most other makes.

Post# 162544 , Reply# 4   10/25/2006 at 08:22 (6,385 days old) by easy-spin ()        

I remember these. The rubber tub was collapsed by suction to squeezee the water from the fabric. The extraction cycle left a lot of water in the clothing.It also produced a very linty wash.

There were two versions both using the same General Tire and Rubber tub.

One had a Thompson pump, the other a Robbins and Meyers. I can't remember which was which but one used a screw type rubber impeller and the other used two rubber gears. They were interchangeable. The screw type (identifiable by the longer pump body) was the better of the two.

I think Maytag supplied the transmission for the later models and Bendix the earlier. They were also interchangeable but visually different.

Crosley also had a version of this which in my opinion was a better machine. Even at it's best, the Crosley left things damper than desired.

Mike A.

Post# 162694 , Reply# 5   10/25/2006 at 17:51 (6,385 days old) by robbiehotpoint ()        
thanks

 Thanks mike for the information. I have never seen one ever except on here in the pictures...

Post# 162885 , Reply# 6   10/26/2006 at 10:26 (6,384 days old) by tomturbomatic (Beltsville, MD)        

The Economat and semi-automatic Dial-a-Mat were great sellers for a couple of reasons. First, they were cheap automatics and semi-automatics because they only needed a wringer washer transmission since they did not spin. Because they did not spin, no suspension was needed either. Second, because they did not spin, they were the first automatics allowed in apartment houses where you could not bolt a washer to the floor and where the landlords did not want the vibration of anything that spun. And, while the system might seem hokey today, the planned laundry for the international space station will use a tumbler style machine to wash the clothes and then a balloon of sorts will inflate to squeeze the water out so that there will not be any vibration to knock the space station out of orbit. I wonder how fast the damp clothes would be freeze-dried if they were exposed to the vacuum of space? If you hung them on a line to dry, they would hang up without gravity and clothes that might be on the floor in some bedrooms would be up against the ceiling. With a vacuum all around the space station, all it would need for a central vac would be wall valves and the hose and attachments. No bags to change or collection chamber to empty and except for the rushing air, it would be quiet. But I digress.

Even though the agitator looked like the Maytag Gyrator, it did not have the metal spline where it engaged the agitator shaft from the transmission and the plastic splines were not as durable, but they lasted about as long as the washer did. The center seal tended to wear kind of quickly and water would leak into the transmission. Once it started leaking oil onto the floor, its days were numbered. The other thing is that the same size agitator in the Bendix gave fabulous roll-over because, just below the narrowed collar where the lid sealed, the tub expanded to become quite wide. I used to think it was so neat to watch the water slosh over the top of the agitator. caused by the top of the agitator being so close to the water level in the tub. If you operated one with the cabinet opened, you could see the tub flex in and out and back and forth with the water currents during agitation. You had to fill it for wash before adding the detergent and clothes because dry clothes in the tub would signal a full tub of water before the tub was full. The water level switch was activated by the the weight of the water in the rubber tub forcing the wall of the tub to expand outward and exert pressure against a metal band around it. The lid springs tended to get weak with age and then the oldest child in the family would have to sit on the lid to hold it closed during the suction extraction.

The pump that had the long sort of wavey shaft that spun inside the long rubber doughnut was unique in that it could suck air and water and was used in the first Whirlpool and Kenmore combos, where areas of the water path to the pump were located above the maximum fill level of the sump and did not hold water after the machine was drained, although some remained in the sump. The water was pulled from the bottom of the sump, up and through the lint filter, which in those machines was flat like a comb with long metal teeth, and then into this same pump. Because the pump could pull air from the higher parts of the system, it was self priming. In later versions of the combo, the filter was curved and went in and down before locking into place so water filled the path from the sump to the filter by gravity. A simpler pump was used in those.


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