On Sat, 17 Mar 2018 20:33:41 +0000, Graham. wrote:


English Electric Liberator, would have been 1961 or 1962.
Yes, it was automatic.

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/images...-Liberator.jpg
(not my parents' actual one, but identical)

You turned the red dial to show the program you wanted in the window,
and then selected the number it showed on the dial on the right, which
slowly turned to go through the wash cycle.
There were contacts on both dials, which combined to form the wash cycle
program. The red dial showed 1-3 different programs,
and the right dial selected which of those it was going to do.

The only thing I ever recall going wrong with it was the clutch,
which allowed the drum inertia to freewheel when it was spinning and the
gearbox changed down gear for a slower speed without back-feeding the
gearbox at high speed. It was a large coil spring slid over the drum
shaft which gripped the shaft when driven by the gearbox, but relaxed
grip if the drum was turning faster than the gearbox output. (The
machine could not reverse the direction of the drum.) The spring broke
after around 12 years, but a replacement was obtained and fitted by my
father.


We had a Hotpoint Liberator about 15 years later, we must have had it
for 10 years until the bearings gave up, and I replaced it with an
identical machine from my parents-in law cellar that had little use.

The first front lording automatic I ever saw was at my next door
neighbours when I was a kid. A Bendix. I was very impressed.

I was quite impressed by the more modern day "Tricity Bendix" (a
fourteen years old re-badged Zanussi) which I had to repair a week or so
back. The innards looked as pristine as the day it was made (the poor old
16A 700v triac, otoh, only *looked* pristine - it had finally succumbed
to the abuse our youngest son had been meting out to the machine[1].

I was quite surprised to see such an *actual* improvement in washing
machine design in the intervening two decades between the 1983 Servis
Quartz that I'd kept running right up until the day we swapped it out for
that Tricity Bendix. If the current crop of Zanussi based washing
machines have maintained this standard, I for one, am only too happy to
recommend the brand.

Once our youngest (now a 35 year old "Twenty Something" Kidult) had
tracked down a YT video showing how to split the casing on a Zanussi
machine that looked the spitting image of our "Tricity Bendix AW 1400 W",
it proved a remarkably easy machine to work on. Also, thanks to my
youngest, I've replaced said triac and still have another five 'spares'.

I suspect his motivation to order one from an ebay trader, then another
five from Farnell the next day to get a quicker delivery in case we
*actually* had to wait a whole 8 days for the first order to arrive, was
partially out of 'guilt' and mainly out of the need to get his next load
of washing washed and dried (see [1] and [2] below).

When we realised the machine had an actual show stopping fault rather
than it being a case of it 'sulking', his first reaction was to suggest
that it immediately be replaced with a brand new machine, poo pooing my
initial reaction that it would be worth taking a closer look at its
innards with a view to repairing it unless some expensively critical
component had failed. It took only a day for my point of view to sink in
[2] before he was glibly volunteering to order the replacement triac at
his own expense.

The first 800v version ordered on the Friday night from an Ebay trader,
I know had cost him £5.45. The following day's Farnell order for a 5 pack
of the 700v triacs, I believe a price of seven quid or so was briefly
mentioned. When I later asked him what he'd paid Farnell, he avoided
answering the question and the delivery note didn't show the price paid,
so my best guess is that he must have shelled out some 13 quid or more
just to speed up the repair process. Not a lot of money in the wider
scheme of things (pocket change, really) when you consider his initial
suggestion that we spend a good three to four hundred quid on a
replacement machine.


[1] He's been doing this for the past decade or so, cramming a week's
worth of his washing into the drum in the hope of getting the job done in
one fell swoop, overcompensating by selecting the longest and most
arduous of wash programme cycles available rather than splitting it and
using two seperate shorter but more effective wash cycles that would
still take less time than the longer cycle. He does the same thing with
the tumble drier (even on good weather drying days) by selecting the
maximum heated tumble dry cycle when a much shorter one will suffice.
That thirteen quid or so he spent on triacs is a small enough token of
atonement indeed.

[2] Also in retrospect, I suspect he could have been thinking, "If the
old fool must insist on attempting a repair, the sooner he fails, the
sooner we can order a new machine.". Mind you, if he *had* been thinking
this, his enthusiasm to help was convincing enough to hide any such
thoughts. He should go far in today's world of "Corporate Bull****
Management"(tm). :-)

--
Johnny B Good