A couple of days ago I found this thing in the trash. I didn’t know what it was but then I read the box it was in, which should have been my first reaction really. It turns out that it was a motor for a washing machine. Working these things are around 60$, but I had no way of knowing if it worked (beyond it “looking clean”).
So I put it on craigslist. Here’s my (now deleted) post:
“Free washer motor -unknown condition
Hey all, I found this in a box in the trash yesterday. It looks pretty clean, so I wonder if it was just never used. I have no way of testing it, so I don’t know if it’s any good. Worse comes to worst it’s probably a nice piece of scrap metal.
Let me know if you’re interested.”
Anyways, about 5 people ended up responding, so I picked one with the “eenie meenie miney mo” technique. He just came to pick it up (right on time, which is very nice). I also gave him another (likely broken) motor I found on Friday night. He was happy to take both – he’s a mechanical engineering student, so these motors would be useful to work on or otherwise learn from.
Just goes to show that you never know what other people might find useful!