I need to hone my internet search skills. When the transmission went out on our 30 year old Kenmore I decided to give my wife an upgrade vs fixing it. I couldn't find a machine with a mechanical timer so I settled on a electronic controlled Maytag. It is slow as molasses, it does get the clothes clean but it takes over an hour to do a normal load. Now the wife has to make double the trips to the shed ( neither of us like having a washer and dryer in the house) as the washer and dryer are now out of synch. The Kenmore pair took about half an hour to wash and half an hour to dry. Now, on to the internet to research the Speed Queen and put the Maytag on Craigslist.
Several years ago, I put a load of clothes in the washer (1995 vintage) and went to bed. I got up about 2am to move them to the dryer, as wrinkles weren't an issue with my jeans. I stepped down into the room into a few inches of water! The timer had gone past the normal stop and hung on "fill" on the next cycle. "Jarring" it didn't work. Water cut-off didn't work. Finally got it to stop and went in search of the shop vac to get the water removed.
Went in search of a replacement, as I didn't want to fix it. Ended up with a newer Whirlpool, which still had a center agitator in it. Kind of a hybrid between old and "high efficiency" with no agitator. By the time it gets through doing all of its test-spins (to gauge the size of the load), clicks, and whirrs, it's an hour to do a light load that used to take 30 minutes to do! I tried different setting and they were equally "fast". Is this the "new and improved" we've now got?? I'm for saving water, but the slowness of these things is not that good.
The newer front-load washers at the new laundromat do similar test-spins, but do their loads in 21 minutes. I'm just glad to know that my whiz-bang Whirlpool is not the only slow washer!
The older Whirlpool I bought in the earlier 1990s, at my house in town, needed a timer. Finally wouldn't work with wedging things under the plastic on the selector dial. Found one nearby, analog search. Easy to install and it worked better than the orig one ever did.
I believe that Maytag refrigerator production is "somewhere else", but glad to hear there are still some washers still made here. Thanks for the advisory!
CBODY67