Empty your pockets

[dnix71]

I run my Avanti W797 washer off grid as much as possible. Today it quit with a full wet load. No drain and no spin. Thought maybe my inverter caused it because the inverter will go into standby sometimes in the middle of a cycle if the washer idles too long switching modes. The Avanti is electronic and if the power fails it simply quits and forgets where it was. You have to manually power up and restart to finish a load interrupted that way.

Dragged it out front and dumped the grey water, then flipped it over and poked around. After playing with it for a while and seeing nothing obvious, I plugged it back in and it would spin again but not pump water. Got an E1 error code, but my user manual doesn't mention error codes. Found an online manual for an older model that said it was a water level timeout. That made sense because the pump didn't work.

This model has an electric pump. The motor and pulley drive the drum only, so a pump failure could be the pump or the controller, but not the clutch. I put my hand on the pump body and it was warm, so I figured it either failed or stalled. Two screws are all that hold the pump to the bottom of the drum, so it was easy to remove. The shaft is magnetically driven. I stuck a screwdriver in the top and forced the impeller to spin and then gave the pump a shake and heard a rattle. Shook some more and the rattle disappeared as the object passed through to the drain hose. Shook out the hose and found a 3/8" plain washer.

I don't remember putting it in my back pocket, but it's my habit to do that with loose fasteners I see around the shop, so I must have brought it home from work and it didn't come out with the change. The washer made a nasty ratting sound on the next load and I found a dime in the bottom of the drum, so from now on I may need to turn my pants pockets inside out just to be sure.

[hiker]

theres always some spare change at the bottom of my whasher!!
the holes in the tub are smaller than the change....so no bind ups !
strange they would put such large holes in the tub--so that change could pass thru! 

[ruddycrazy]

A few years ago I swapped a Rectifier kit I had made from an Oatley Electronics kit for a refurbished 7kg F&P washing machine. Anyway the washing machine worked great for years then the missus complained the that it wouldn't pump out so I took a a look at it. Fired up the machine and put it on rinse then BANG the magic smoke rose up in the air...... Took the pump out and it was bound up with hair and cloth etc so it was seized up. My missus went in and asked for a quote for a new pump, $45 not too bad but the new pump controller board $400 OUCH.

Remembered I had some old F&P circuit boards in the shed so ripped out the controller board on the search for the missing magic smoke and found a triac had given up the ghost. Went up to the shed and found 3 of the same triac's only to find 1 was ok so replaced that one on the controller board. Put the controller board back in the machine and fired it up with no pump on and it came to life so went and bought the new pump and the machine has been working great ever since.

Now a few weeks earlier a work mate said he had F&P that had stopped working so being the suedo sleuth took a look to find pet mouse crap had shorted out the hall effect sensors and a quick swap with a similar one I had in my shed got it working like new again. 

Cheers Bryan

[DamonHD]

That's two excellent repair jobs and after-dinner stories!

Rgds

Damon

[OperaHouse]

My sister had an appliance store on Nantucket.  Vacations there were free but she always made me do service calls.  Can't tell you how many times I pulled skimpy panties out of washer pumps.  More entertaining than a flat washer.  I have an Arista washer I got from her The controller seems to have problems but I was going to make it run off solar directly with a UNO as the replacement.  Its pump also doesn't function.  This is the bi directional pump with the magnet impeller.  It will just buzz back and forth  wheter on inverter or generator. So simple but beyond explanation.  Replacing it anyway with 120V version instead of 230V.

[oztules]

I see a lot of these pumps over here when I have to help fix things ( on an island you get sought out when things fail )
Full synchronous motor, and provided the coil is in tact (easily rewound anyway), they will always go back into service.

The main thing that stops them is simple blockage ( covered already here), and fine materials getting behind the front seal, and down into the magnet area. This will cause a slight stiffness.


Being synchronous without a start up system, the magnet oscillates between clock and anti clockwise at start up,. The "clutch" in the impeller makes it frictionless for most of a turn, and then grips. By then the magnet should have start ed to follow a field, and have a direction, and the impeller now is driven by the rotor via the slip clutch in the head of the impeller. If it does not on the first pulse, it "bounces" off both the impellers inertia, and  impeller vanes against the water via the clutch, and heads in the opposite direction, and tries harder to catch the moving field. It may do this a few times, bouncing back and forth from the end points and the fields.

The only thing that can stop this, is if the impeller clutch is jammed or broken, so not giving it a frictionless first half turn, or if the fine muds clogged in the rotor area are making it less than completely free turning. In that case, the rotor can't ever catch up to the driving field, as the rotor inertia appears  too high, and as it starts off in one direction, the ac wave will change before it can get up to sync, or bounce at the "end", so it has to reverse on it's own and try again. Without friction, and a good clutch, it is fail safe, but if anything slows the first rotation/s / oscillations, it will not be able to catch up in time before the next cycle. and just oscillate.

I like this style of motor as they are mostly able to be pressed back into service without difficulty.




..................oztules

[SparWeb]

A couple of years ago, I filled the washing machine with clothes, started it up, and went out to do some chores.  When I came back in about an hour later I discovered it on the spin-cycle making a horrible scraping noise and a growing pool of water around the bottom!  Unloading the clothes I discovered the key from a fire extinguisher that must have come out of my son's pants pocket.  Just something he picked up off the ground, he said, thought was cool, and forgot about.  He never cleans out his pockets before starting the laundry.  So the long wire end of the key stuck through a drain hole in the washer's inner tub, and was just long enough to score through the bottom of the outer tub.  It went around and around and around until it tore through.