I blew up our "Professional" Kitchenaid after 3 years. Replaced the brushes, disassembled and checked everything, no dice. Called Kitchen Aid. They pretty much shut me down on warranty or reasonably-priced repair. Not cool for a $300+ item, in my book - the proposed repair would have cost as much as a new mixer, with no warranty on that work either.So long story short, I googled "Kitchenaid sucks". Try it and see what you find...
Sarah and I did a bunch of research, and discovered that in the late 70s Kitchenaid was a division of Hobart - which makes industrial equipment, and welders, and all kinds of great stuff, all in the USA. Then Hobart sold the name to Whirlpool/GE, and the quality went downhill fast.Long story short, the vintage mixers from the Hobart days all still work great - and are hard/expensive to find. We got a smoking deal on this one - only $215. And it's 35 years old!
But it's a Hobart, so hopefully it'll last another 35. We'll see.
5 comments:
I'll file this under the category of: 'new things learned today'...
this post is so Walt! awesome.
Only thing about those old hobart's is that you really have to watch your digits. While the kitchen aid might break a finger or a wrist, the hobart will take your arm. When I was in the platte, we used a 5hp Hobart mixer (probably from the 50's) every day. Awesome and a bit terrifying. I could actually climb into to mixing bowl.
I never thought I'd comment about a mixer, much less on a bike blog, but my mom had that same mixer and I have fond memories of helping her make angel food cake with it. It had a super industrial/electric/oil like smell as it grinded away. The mixer is still around after nearly 40 years!
My parents have an old Hobart meat grinder, and when I worked in a pizza place we had a ginormous Hobart dough mixer. As far as I know, those are both still running, and they're both ~30 years old with hours and hours of use.
Post a Comment