Appliance Land is a very good source for stuff like this, the only thing comparable to the old heavy duty washers is Speed queen. Specifically their Classic Clean series that still uses a transmission. Also If you ever have a control board go bad, I use a very good shop near baltimore that can repair them. (very rarely do proprietary chips go bad, generally it's just generic relays and capacitors that fry). It's called US Electronics Repairs, a bunch of older TV repair guys run it.
Finally, I currently have a pair of 1995 Whirlpool HD units that I bought used 5 years ago when I first bought my house. I learned to make repairs on them using Appliance parts pros.com They have very good videos and OEM parts at a good price. I heard the combo units are much harder to work on. But with that site your not a compleat slave to the repairman.
Quite the adventure! If I may, there may be one other reason why washer/dryer sizes of the ones you are looking for are no longer made. It's possible that the market, while it exists, isn't large enough to have a large enough ROI for the manufacture and sale of that particular size range. In a way, it might have a weird tie-in with housing policy, in that a majority of dwellings in the US seem to be either single-family units that are large enough for a full-size washer/dryer, or else are apartments that can only take the combined units like the one you wound up with. So, in this case, it could just be the appliance market responding to the incentives provided by the housing market, though it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn of a anti-consumer motive among the manufacturers.
It's interesting that you brought up John Deere...growing up in the 1990s, my family relied on a pair of early 1950's vintage John Deere Model M tractors for a variety of tasks on our 13 acres. Turns out, it's hard to get a medium-sized tractor in that size range, as everything is either gigantic (designed for 100s of acres) or else just a glorified lawn mower! That seems to have changed a bit in the last 10 or so years, it seems, but then there are still the issues of dealing with modern John Deere's predatory maintenance policies. Those classic JD tractors will run just about forever, and when something does break, you can fix it in a garage with relatively basic tools. Plus, unlike with appliances, there are in fact tractor junkyards out there to get parts from!
The washer in my apartment stopped working a few years ago. I called my landlord and she sent a technician to come look at it, and he confirmed it was broken and not worth repairing. He took it away, so we could get a replacement right away. My landlord promptly bought us a new machine. We plugged it in and it won't work. Finally I figured out the issue was with the tap on the wall, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with old washer. So yeah, our landlord bought a new washing machine for no reason.
Interesting story. One detail I would add which can provide some background into why many older GE products were discontinued is that GE Appliances (the company) was taken over by Chinese manufacturer Haier back in 2016. I am almost sure that Haier has withdrawn all previous models by now and replaced them with their own designs or platforms and accessories/ancillary components. Hence, today‘s GE products have little if anything in common with the ones from the 2000-2010 era like the ones you had installed at your home.
Oh Jesus. You have to do ANYTHING YOU CAN to keep old appliances working! A 30-year-old Anything will keep lasting longer than a new Something will last before the Something needs repairs, and if you can find an older appliance-repair company to service your Anything, it will be better than dealing with a Something that may look great but whose motherboard crashes in months and for which you cannot get a repairman for weeks. Appliances also illustrate the downfall of American goods (although everyone I know also deplores their Bosch products). I am so sorry you went through that; I would not have lasted as long and would have just considered starting to take the laundry out to be done and waiting for a used set to come on Craigslist (although people now look at them as disposable; the stories I have heard from the man who fixes my appliances in Albemarle about the attitudes of the nouveau riche in Western Albemarle toward their appliances are horrific—not wanting to wait to donate them to Habitat, for instance).
I'm curious if the home warranty been worth it for you so far? If you had saved the money spent on the warranty and service calls and instead and paid for the replacement/repairs yourself would it have been cheaper? I recently had to replace some parts in my ~15 year old whirlpool refrigerator. And while the parts weren't cheap (total around $300), it wasn't anywhere close to what they wanted to charge you for the washer parts.
Appliance Land is a very good source for stuff like this, the only thing comparable to the old heavy duty washers is Speed queen. Specifically their Classic Clean series that still uses a transmission. Also If you ever have a control board go bad, I use a very good shop near baltimore that can repair them. (very rarely do proprietary chips go bad, generally it's just generic relays and capacitors that fry). It's called US Electronics Repairs, a bunch of older TV repair guys run it.
Finally, I currently have a pair of 1995 Whirlpool HD units that I bought used 5 years ago when I first bought my house. I learned to make repairs on them using Appliance parts pros.com They have very good videos and OEM parts at a good price. I heard the combo units are much harder to work on. But with that site your not a compleat slave to the repairman.
Quite the adventure! If I may, there may be one other reason why washer/dryer sizes of the ones you are looking for are no longer made. It's possible that the market, while it exists, isn't large enough to have a large enough ROI for the manufacture and sale of that particular size range. In a way, it might have a weird tie-in with housing policy, in that a majority of dwellings in the US seem to be either single-family units that are large enough for a full-size washer/dryer, or else are apartments that can only take the combined units like the one you wound up with. So, in this case, it could just be the appliance market responding to the incentives provided by the housing market, though it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn of a anti-consumer motive among the manufacturers.
It's interesting that you brought up John Deere...growing up in the 1990s, my family relied on a pair of early 1950's vintage John Deere Model M tractors for a variety of tasks on our 13 acres. Turns out, it's hard to get a medium-sized tractor in that size range, as everything is either gigantic (designed for 100s of acres) or else just a glorified lawn mower! That seems to have changed a bit in the last 10 or so years, it seems, but then there are still the issues of dealing with modern John Deere's predatory maintenance policies. Those classic JD tractors will run just about forever, and when something does break, you can fix it in a garage with relatively basic tools. Plus, unlike with appliances, there are in fact tractor junkyards out there to get parts from!
The washer in my apartment stopped working a few years ago. I called my landlord and she sent a technician to come look at it, and he confirmed it was broken and not worth repairing. He took it away, so we could get a replacement right away. My landlord promptly bought us a new machine. We plugged it in and it won't work. Finally I figured out the issue was with the tap on the wall, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with old washer. So yeah, our landlord bought a new washing machine for no reason.
Interesting story. One detail I would add which can provide some background into why many older GE products were discontinued is that GE Appliances (the company) was taken over by Chinese manufacturer Haier back in 2016. I am almost sure that Haier has withdrawn all previous models by now and replaced them with their own designs or platforms and accessories/ancillary components. Hence, today‘s GE products have little if anything in common with the ones from the 2000-2010 era like the ones you had installed at your home.
Oh Jesus. You have to do ANYTHING YOU CAN to keep old appliances working! A 30-year-old Anything will keep lasting longer than a new Something will last before the Something needs repairs, and if you can find an older appliance-repair company to service your Anything, it will be better than dealing with a Something that may look great but whose motherboard crashes in months and for which you cannot get a repairman for weeks. Appliances also illustrate the downfall of American goods (although everyone I know also deplores their Bosch products). I am so sorry you went through that; I would not have lasted as long and would have just considered starting to take the laundry out to be done and waiting for a used set to come on Craigslist (although people now look at them as disposable; the stories I have heard from the man who fixes my appliances in Albemarle about the attitudes of the nouveau riche in Western Albemarle toward their appliances are horrific—not wanting to wait to donate them to Habitat, for instance).
I'm curious if the home warranty been worth it for you so far? If you had saved the money spent on the warranty and service calls and instead and paid for the replacement/repairs yourself would it have been cheaper? I recently had to replace some parts in my ~15 year old whirlpool refrigerator. And while the parts weren't cheap (total around $300), it wasn't anywhere close to what they wanted to charge you for the washer parts.