There was a time when gasoline was so plentiful and cheap, it was almost a nuisance. This 1935 Maytag hit and miss engine is proof of that fact because yes, it formerly powered a clothes washing machine like the kind you have plugged in to the wall in your laundry room. I was blissfully unaware that a thing like this existed until several years ago when my family and I headed down to the Rough and Tumble Thresherman’s Reunion down in Pennsylvania and we saw dozens of these little washing machine engines in both stock and restored form. This particular engine is “brand new” as described by the owner but we’re not sure if it is restored or some new old stock piece that has just seen the light of day after decades gathering dust and cobwebs.
The funny thing to consider when you hear this little engine is that if you were a kid in the 1930s, pedaling your bike through a neighborhood or a small stand of houses in rural America, there would be an exhaust pipe protruding from the side of the home and the snappy sound of a little engine like this would have joined with others in a weird little mechanical percussion section. On the flip side, the best thing that happened to kids of this era was when something went wrong with the upper end of the washer or the family decided to change the unit out and enterprising dads would grab the small engines and mate them to a chassis for a rudimentary little go kart. We have seen lots of old photos on the web of “go karts” (before there technically was such a name) in action with washing machine engines.
Can you imagine if Maytag announced that they’d be building a gasoline powered washing machine today? Everyone would freak out from the government on down. Granted, we’d buy one and probably put some boost to it to see how fast the spin cycle would grow before you scorched a bearing in the washer drum. Also, when we think of a Maytag man, we think of a guy fixing electronic appliances. Back in the 1930s, these guys were doing ring jobs and other engine work to keep the units of the day up and running.
PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE A SNAPPY LITTLE 1935 MAYTAG ENGINE MAKE THE SAME NOISE YOU WOULD HAVE HEARD DURING THE DEPRESSION WHEN CLOTHES WERE BEING WASHED –
Most of those gas powered washers would sit on a porch or in a shed. Most people didn’t have a laundry room until after WW2.
How weird is this?
Not 10 minutes ago I was reading the excellent Perfida by James Ellroy in which a Maytag advertisement was mentioned. Now you have an article about Maytag…
I can just imagine some clown reading this and then hooking up an LS to his reeking refrigerator. There would be a scream of revs and then the pile of junk would go nuclear causing his Frigidaire or whatever to explode showering him with rotting food and slicing him to bits with shards from exploding bottles of beer.
While his neighbor laughed in contentment as his Ford-powered kitchen purred along nicely…..
One of those would be really handy right now along the east coast.
Look up shopdogsam on youtube. He’s brilliant!