The washing machine seems to have a knack for breaking at extremely inconvenient times...
This time, I was out of town in Dallas on business.
Based on the symptoms Jeanie described, it appeared to be another failure of the drive coupling just like what happened last February as documented in this post.
Well, it turns out that there is a Sears parts center less than five minutes from the IBM site I am working at, so on Wednesday, I ran over to the parts center and picked up another part# - 285753A.
This morning, I was fortunate that I had a lull in the action at work, so I went to replace the coupling.
The good news is that the clothes washer is once again working. The bad news is that I made a few mistakes that created extra work, aggravation, and a sore back.
The mistakes included:
1. I removed the screws at the top back of the control panel
which I shouldn't have. The cover does need to be removed, but not these screws.
Only the screws on the bottom front (under the cover panel) need to be removed.
see the original post for the full sequence to remove the cabinet.
2. When you remove the hose from the tub to the pump, what appears to be just a little bit of water in the tub ends up being a LOT of water on the laundry room floor. I'm not quite sure what the right answer would have been, as there isn't a lot of room between the bottom of the hose and the floor (maybe a garbage bag?) but a small catch pan didn't cut it. Have lots of old towels available too.
3. It turned out the drive coupling was just fine. My guess is that maybe the impeller in the drain pump got jammed as happened in November of 2003, as was documented in this post. I didn't find a sock, but there was a lot of wet lint in the water on the laundry room floor - maybe that was enough to jam it. It doesn't take much to jam the impeller on the drain pump. Lesson learned is, before you remove the motor, check the drain pump to ensure it moves freely.
4. I had a devil of a time getting the cabinet back on the washer. Lesson learned was: when placing the cabinet back on the washer, the majority of the cabinet sits on TOP of the washing machine bottom frame member. Only the very front of the cabinet slides under the frame. In order to get the cabinet to align with the tabs on the top of the frame, you must tip the cabinet forward quite a bit (more than you would think) as you slide it back the last inch or two.
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Posted by David at April 10, 2009 01:00 PM | Categorized under: A day in the life, Reference