Getting the dirt .... er, out

[unixronin]

Or, "Yay!  The washer works again!"

Capsule summary: On Sunday, our salvaged hand-me-down washing machine stopped working.  It wouldn't drain, and smelled of hot metal.  When switched to a drain cycle, it just clicked and did nothing.  I totally spaced on doing anything about it yesterday.

Today, I went and hauled all the clothes out of it, intending to troubleshoot it some more, looked at the soapy water in the bottom, turned it to drain just to see exactly what it did ... and it drained.

"Huh," I thought.  "Cool."  So I loaded all the clothes back in, switched it to a rinse cycle, temporarily defeated the lid interlock so that I could observe, and watched as it rinsed, drained and spun.  It wasn't a full rinse, because I'd set the load size to Small while I was testing it, but it worked fine.  So I set it back to regular load and restarted the wash cycle without adding additional soap, and it appears to be working perfectly.

Speculation:  Some small solid particle jammed the outlet solenoid valve, and the hot metal smell was the solenoid running continuously trying to open the valve.  When I went to re-test it today, whatever was blocking the valve washed free.

Anyway, the good news is it's working now, with basically little more than a laying on of hands, so we don't, after all, have to go out looking for a replacement washer that we really don't have the money for.

Comments

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

go you!