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Re: The Worst Machine Ever Built!
andy_art_trigg wrote:What about the Hoover top loader made in France? Was is A1004 or something? .
Yes I remember that thing, made by Thomson.
But it pales into insignificance when compared to the Candy top loader.
They had a counterweight to make the drum return with the doors at the top when finished, all very well but the weight of the clothes negated that, only worked if the drum was empty, and if that was the case the drum is already in the right place from when you unloaded it. If you ran it empty on a test phase, it would vibrate.
There were bearings at one end of the tub only, god knows why as they used to last about 18 months. Major job when they failed.
The heater was accessible from a small plastic aperture in the side of the cabinet, trouble was you could test there, but not remove the thing as there were nowhere to put your hands or a tool to remove said heater. Great if the customer had set it going with the doors open, as everything used to jam into the element. You were also guaranteed to slash your wrists on the edges of the access opening. That is before you get to strip out the tub.
The indicator dial on the programmer had to be inserted in such a way over the top of a plastic projection on reassembly, a work of art in itself.
After over 30 years and seen em all, nothing to date beats it, not even the Zanussi Jetsystem W/Dryer WDJ1013 1987 to 1993.
I must now go and lie in a darkened room after recalling that heap of rubbish.
Alex
Well there was the Zerowatt 1000 as well Alex. 😉
Now, I know engineers that were almost in staightjacket due to that pile of ! 😆
K.
Re: The Worst Machine Ever Built!
I was trying to forget the old Candy toploader thing, really I was, but it was such a pile I thought it was worth a mention.
Alex has managed to sum up most of the failings in the “thing” pretty well but left out the real kicker. Candy Service were blissfully unaware that any had been sold in the UK at all!
When we first got a call from DAG (IIRC) to go and see the first one I saw, or anyone in the company at that time, we actually queried the model number as it just didn’t seem right at all. But no it was correct, we actually suspected that it wasn’t a Candy at all.
Of course the fault was “noisy”, so you know what’s coming don’t you? Yep, it was a bearing failure on a machine that no-one had ever seen, there was no technical information available for at all, Candy told us wasn’t even for sale in the UK at the time and that was the spawn of Satan. I got the pleasure of the first bearing job on one in Scotland with a co-worker, it took months for the wounds to heal and still longer for the bitter memories to fade.
Now, I with another bod could do a Candy bearing change (pre-Charme, damned silicon and production line cr@p) in about 45 minutes, even on a washer dryer for those that slate Candy, yet this thing took well over 3 hours! In actual fact once you get your head around the Candy design it is actually pretty simple and easy to deal with, even if it does mean a few cuts along the way.
Not a happy memory that one at all and Candy’s sales team later admitted something along the lines of, “yeah, we did sell a few of those but we’re sure you got the memo”. 😕
The strange thing is, I still like Candy stuff probably as I grew up with it and the people at Candy in my years of working with them were, shall we say, “colourfull”. 😉
K.
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