Photo please!

My family had one of those when I was a kid - a Deluxe Multimatic with the beige painted dashboard.

I'm excited for you.

You know these were made at the Holden factory in Dandenong, don't you?

My memories aren't good, I'm afraid. We had no end of trouble with ours.

It shook the whole house when it was spinning (not washing) to the point it rattled my bedroom windows four rooms away. It was a solid house, my Dad was a carpenter and he built it himself.  Most of the time when it started to spin the clothes would ball up on one side and the tub would clunk clunk clunk against the out of balance switch till it shut off. It drove us mad, it would take several tries to get it spinning most times, and sometimes the motor overload button would cut off before we got it spinning, which meant waiting several minutes for it to cool down before you could press reset and try again. Once you finally got it spinning it would shake the whole house. Dad even tried a 3 or 4 inch thick slab of concrete under the washing machine, to stop it jumping on our timber floor, but it would just walk off the slab and crash into the wall, so that was a bad idea.

Yours might not have an out of balance switch, outs had a combined lid/balance switch that stuck out from the back into the opening under the lid, a flat chromed metal arm,  sort of spoon shaped. A finger on the lid poked down to press the "spoon" lever, yours doesn't seem to have the finger on the lid or the "spoon" under it.

Eventually ours broke down and was taken away for repair to a Frigidaire agent, all the way from Frankston to Muirs at Airport West. They dismantled it and fully reconditioned it at great expense. We were hoping they would do something to improve its balance, but it was just the same.

When I was a teenager I got a part time job after school, saved a little and bought a used GE Filter Flo from the Trading Post for about $25. Mum and I picked it up using her car and Dad's trailer. It was a much better machine.

I think your machine is a  bit older than ours, but very similar, maybe yours was one or two years older?? Ours had beige (baby poo brown) dashboard, a chrome strip across the centre with odd "square bow" patterns on it, and more beige paint below the chrome strip.

One odd thing, yours says "two speed automatic" on the aluminium strip under the timer. But AFAIK a Deluxe is single speed, it has only one cycle, plus a soak section. The only adjustments are wash time and water temperature. I wonder if the aluminium trim has been replaced on your machine?

Good luck with yours.

I have a much older Australian Frigidaire, there is a link below to a photo of it on this website. It has a round body and is manually operated, you fill it from a hose then turn it to "wash" or "spin."

I have owned it for quite a few years, unfortunately I stored it a shed away from where we lived for a while and the shed leaked, so it now has some rust on the lower parts. I have now moved it to our new shed and I intend to restore it later this year. It worked very well when I put it in storage, much better than the automatic one we had when I was a kid.

I suspect at some time that the Australian-made machines were fitted with a locally sourced motor that didn't suit the application - the old machine builds up spin speed slowly as it pumps out, and it all happens calmly and reliably. I suspect the later machines use a different type of motor that accelerates to spin speed too fast, any slight off-balance goes hysterical and it jumps, bangs and cuts off.

I have heard several stories about how bad these 1960s Aussie Frigidaires were at shaking / vibrating on spin, that is my guess why.