Two Socks Enter, One Sock Leaves; Or; Angry Washer Repair

If you don’t want to replace the agitator, and do things the expensive way, read on.

Which includes waiting for appointments that give a range, from 6AM to 11PM, forcing you to take an entire day off to pamper a fraudulent repair man.

Or buing another washer, from a salesman that knows they only last a year or two, who gets sick pleasure from watching people crawl back in questionably-clean clothes.

Then this text is for you, but this is not the correct way to fix your washer.

It is a way to fix it wrong, that may eat a sock or two evey few years.

However, while you should use your best judgement, this gets stuff working again for just about $6 bucks.

The short version, is that your agitator is made of plastic, to protect your clothes, and becasue it is cheap.

But the rod uponwhich the agitator is affixed, is metal, so it is metal against plastic, and plastic wears.

It will be either replacing agitator dogs, or using strong two part epoxy to glue the base.

For full advice, search your favorite video website for repair videos, please lookup "a washer diagram" on the internet first to learn component names.

You will learn better visually, from other repair videos.

My main contribution to your repair, is letting you know that internet is full of repair videos.

What follows is just a long meandering story, with a few anectodes a long the way.

My apartment has seen three washers now, the original handsome brown 1980 model.

A new one that lasted only a few years, before the agitator columnn stop spinning.

And the current one, which broke just this week.

And it was the agitator again, I own a top loading model.

Where the agitator, extends full length of the drum.

It is a good idea, the clothes not only rotate back and forth, but also up and down.

The agitator is full lentgh of the drum, because it is two agitators.

The base, that rotates left and right. and the upper screw that pulls clothes up.

Making them travel up and away to the side wall, and around.

Even so, no one should need to by a washer every few years, so I decided to investigate what the hell is going on.

I unnecessarily looked under the washer first, I tested that the belt seemed OK and that there was no plastic residue from gears.

Plastic residue on the bottom, maybe a big problem.

As that my mean the plastic gears sheered off, though I had seen video, where a person was still gluing them.

Look up part names in a diagram and search around, it may not be as bad as it seems.

If you do have a top loading full column agitator, there are two problem that can happen.

As the agitator comes in two parts. The base, which should spin but not freely.

This means when you spin the base, you should feel that you are turning the motor beneath.

If it feels flimsy, than that means, your washer agitator is not spinning…

Because it is no longer attached to the motor, the connection between the motor rod coming up from the bottom.

And the plastic base that agitates water, sheered off, likely due to overloading your washer.

So the motor shaft tried spinning, but the clothes prevented it from moving.

And the connection between iron shaft, and plastic base, failed.

There are some matching grooves there, in plastic and the metal shaft.

But when the motor jerks to agitate the water, and the plastic cant move.

Then the plastic grooves will get erased, by the metal, it is like drilling in plastic – it stands no chance.

The top can fail too, the top is seated on the base, and it looks like a ship screw.

It pulls up clothes surrounding the agitator up, so that your undies aren’t just stuck in the center of the wacher.

But move to the top, and sink to the bottom.

So the agitator causes two dimensional motion, back and forth circular motion, and vertical from down to up and to the side.

But, you don’t want to have a ship screw, trying to proper your favorite silk shirts.

So it comes with a stupid trick trick, the top only moves in one direction.

The top screw can only move forward, and never backward.

As a programmer, this is stupid, because it involves a super flimsy extra gear.

It introduces a point of failure, in a critical part of the system hammered by evey wash cycle.

The gear accomplished one way rotation, by flimsy almost rubbery four plastic parts, called agitator dogs.

If your washer, during a cycle, can’t gently put something up, with the top of the column, the ship propeller.

It will destroy the rubbery agitator dogs, the gear will fail to prevent clockwise motion.

The top part will move freely left and right, the dogs will not come out to engage the arresting gear.

That means as your base, and the central motor-connected rod, move clockwise.

The top agitator propeller will not move along, it will just sit there, it will not pull up and around your clothes.

The bottom agitator will move things around back and forth, but the top agitator will just sit there.

It maybe broken right now, how would you know? Your clothes will still come-out fresh-ish.

So if you have a top loading model with a full column, rising from bottom of the drum to top.

Gently grab the top agitator by the ship screw, and see if it rotates both ways.

The top cup where you add fabric softener, that is just a flimsy litter cover, that will rotate, grab the ears of the ship screw.

If it does, the agitator dogs are broken, and your clothes do not do not get pulled up and to the side.

It is a little known fact, that they are called agitator dogs, not because they are part of the upper agitator.

But because they have been designed to agitate you, because now you have to spend four bucks on four pieces of plastic.

And begin repair, I am agitated just writing about this.

Finally, repair, I cant help you with the bottom of the washer, but I can help you fix the top.

Lets start with the bottom, is it moving freely, or do you feel like you are moving the motor.

Is there some flimsiness to it? If so, then you should consider it broken.

The bottom agitator must work hard at sloshing water, back and forth, if it is flimsy, it is not performing.

Now lets move to the top, if it moves both ways when you grab it by the screw.

Get agitator dogs, and go watch videos, about replacing them.

If you base is moving the motor, replacing dogs will take 3 minutes.

Pull up the fabric softener cup, there is a seal with an o-ring, pull that up with a tool.

And what you will see is the damn dog gear, you maybe able to see plastic bits around the soap gunk that got in there.

And that is your problem, unscrew the screw at the center.

Easier said than done, if your bottom agitator is broken and moves freely.

Because, you have no way to grab the shaft, so trying to unscrew the huge screw, will rotate the motor.

But try to tip the drum, try tipping the bottom agitator, to make that failed plastic engage one last time.

And please, use your f-word, traditionally, wearing low-rise pants, that expose your rear shall we say CRACK! a tiny little bit also seems to help.

Tipping things to the side and cursing, will help you.

Once you remove the screw, if your base is broken. plug the screw hole with a long easy to remove roll of paper.

You do not want epoxy getting into the screw hole, epoxy will weld that hole shut, and you will never remove the screw again.

Now pull up the weird and flimsy gear, and it is so flimsy, it will just fall apart.

The bottom part, that is supposed hold agitator dogs. can just fall off, making the stupid dogs scatter. it is a crappy friction fit.

If your base is solid, put in the new dogs, again use your f-word, please - including before you start assembly.

Maybe use a tiny-tiny bit of tissue to improve the friction fit, that holds the dogs together, to prevent it from falling.

And if your base is not flimsy, and turns the motor, rather that just moving freely, no matter how litte.

Gently insert the stupid dog gear, and test to see if the ship screw now turns in one direction only.

You are done, screw the screw, but not too hard, the top agitator must move freely, in one direction.

Put in the o-ring, and replace the cup.

Call your friends, asking them about the agitator dogs.

If it is the bo ttom, if it moves freely in a flimsy way, you will have to pull the entire column up.

Take the top off the agitator lean into the drum and pull up the bottom.

You will see plastic debris on the shaft, use a brush to clean it off.

Clean the inside of the bottom agitator, best you can, the roughens of the damaged plastic, will help the epoxy.

And you will need epoxy with the highest PSI, it should cost about $6 dollars.

The stuff is toxic, don’t breathe it in, use a fan, mix it up, apply it to the degrease shaft.

You probably don’t need to add it inside the agitator base, despite damage it is a tight fit, so epoxy will squeeze out either way.

Make sure to protect that screw hole, and slowly put the base on the shaft.

Watch your eyes, the epoxy will squeeze out, clean the top of the plastic, whatever squeezed out around the paper in the hole.

And wait for the epoxy to cure, that base will now be permanently attached to the metal shaft.

You were supposed to replace it, or call a repair man.

But, that is the con, they want you to do that, so now you have a permanent epoxy bond.

You will never remove that base, ever.

Remember, to keep that, screw hole clean.

If epoxy gets in there, you shouldn't wait for the epoxy to cure.

If you do, you will never be able to put the screw in, as the epoxy will get into the screw thread.

I told you to put a roll of paper in there, but no, who does that? Whatever… lol.

With the epoxy in the screw hole, you need a way to clean it, or just put everything together.

In the future, you will never be able to replace those dogs, if you epoxy the screw in place.

Be careful not to get epoxy into the screw hole, but if you do, and you don’t wan to to mess with it.

You will now take bad repair with epoxy, to a new level, when your dogs go bad.

You will need to weld that with epoxy too, meaning that the top column will not just move one way.

But rotate, just the same way as the base.

It won’t tear up your clothes, but if stuff gets stuck the bottom of the washer, will break next.

There are probably plastic gears in there, and those may not be an easy fix, though I’ve seen it done.

Bottom line is this, you pay for your washer, it should work for ages.

But today’s washers fail after a couple of years, you can either keep calling the repair person, or get a new one.

Or just weld the plastic parts shut, it is bad repair, the plastic is meant to fail at a certain point.

It has been tested, and a reasonable company, that cares for details will see that as a safety mechanism.

If you get something stuck in there, you rip the bottom agitator or dogs, and need to call for repair.

The right way to control something being stuck, is in the software, in the micro controller that controls the cycle.

Cheap washers, under some popular brand name, just destroy the agitator, and expect you to pay.

It will be a lot more than $7 for epoxy, and they will just replace the plastic.

They will not upgrade the micro-controller, to sense stress on the motor and wisely stop the cycle.

Letting you remove the stuck clothes, and protecting the agitator assembly.

Using epoxy, is bad repair, but you’ve been tricked into paying for an inferior product.

How many times will you replace the agitator, how many washers are you going to buy?

Because that is the number, where you finally snap, and spend seven bucks on bad ass epoxy that welds the con game shut.

Interestingly turning your washer drum into a thunder-dome, where two socks enter, and sometimes just one sock leaves.