Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Look What I Can Do!


Our washing machine stopped spinning the other day. Fortunately it was on the last load of laundry for the day, but dirty clothes don't stop coming, so I had to do something. Nathan was busy working in Park City, so I couldn't just hand the job over to him. I found this cool website with specific diagrams of any make and model of appliance you can imagine. I was able to scroll over the picture and find out what each part was responsible for. When I came to the motor coupling device I knew I had found the culprit.

The next step was to call my friend April, who seems to thrive on taking things apart and fixing them. I asked for suggestions and she offered to come over and look at my washer with me. Using the online diagram and a few tools, we were able to disassemble the washing machine down to the transmission. There was the disintegrated coupling device (see diagram at left).


So April took the motor to an appliance shop where the owner removed the damaged piece and replaced it. She then came back over after kids were in bed and we successfully put the machine back together with the functional part. And guess what . . .
IT WORKED!

So I learned lots of new things yesterday. And now if something goes wrong with another appliance (though I hope it doesn't) I just might try to fix it myself!




As a postscript, I had to include the picture of the dryer motor, as Nathan replaced that on his own just last month! I'm proud of him too!
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