For Austin and others running these machines: Sunday morning, I had a load of Permanent Press fabrics in my Kenmore Dual Tumbler Washer. Everything was cool until the first spin when sounds came from the machine like when an automatic transmission flies apart at highway speeds. I immediately stopped the machine and lifted everything over and into the KitchenAid. After hooking up the fluorescent work light, I went in to remove a tub baffle to see what was going on. First bad sign: I noticed that the clips on the side opposite the screws were missing. Once I had the baffle out, the water in the sump was filled with floating gray plastic parts from the baffles and the big translucent baffle over the sump strainer was floating loose. Further examination showed the porcelainized steel bracket to which the sump baffle is anchored had broken from its attachment to the outer tub. John always keeps the repair kit in stock because it fits the WH machines back to 1959. He called Tribles to order a replacement for stock and found out that only 4 of these repair kits are left at Electrolux and after that, it will be NLA. There might be some in appliance parts dealers around the country, but we bought ours in January of 05 and according to Tribles, that was the last one they sold in their whole network of stores.
The repair kit is made in such a way that you can do the whole job through the opening where the baffle fits into the side of the tub. You drill two holes through the outer tub, use washers, screws and silicone sealer to mount the new bracket and then attach the sump baffle to it. If you do not have the kit, repairing this could possibly require removing the front of the outer tub, then removing the inner tub so that you could install a replacement bracket, although if you knew what the service part looked like, you might be able to bend a strip of stainless steel into the required shape and make the repair through the tub baffle opening.
For the record, the Electrolux part number for the bracket, screws & washers is: 5300088824. The deler cost has gone up to $35.00, a ten dollar increase since last year. Failure of this bracket is not an uncommon failure as these machines age, but the newer machines used a poorer quality of steel and a lighter coat of porcelain so the failures in them happen sooner. Tom
Post# 115158 , Reply# 1 3/14/2006 at 09:07 (6,610 days old) by westytoploader ()
I'm starting to hate these Dual-Tumbles with a passion...they may be splashy and fun to watch but they still leak from the door, have annoying pauses between tumbling, and can't balance worth a s**t. Although since I spent $54 on a new aluminum tub drive pulley last year, I'm going to use the machine as long as it lasts! Did a load of beach towels yesterday that I had to re-distribute on more than 1 occasion.
I've removed the vanes in my machine on numerous occasions (remember when I did this last December Jason?), and thankfully the porcelain is intact underneath. Both vanes have large chunks of plastic chipped out of them; not sure how THAT happened, but the few times I tried to spin a particularly sudsy load, all of a sudden I heard this horrible rattling noise inside the outer tub, like when you pick up something that shouldn't have been picked up with a fan-first vacuum cleaner. Have checked the coin trap on numerous occasions, but found nothing...yet. It's been a good while since that happened, though. If, for any reason, a 3-belt machine in decent shape shows up in my area, I'm jumping at it and that Dual-Tumble will be OUTTA HERE!
Did the 3-belt machines suffer from this "porcelain failure" as well?
Austin, yes, that's why the part has been available for more than 40 years. All Westinghouse tumbler washers have a tendency to tangle. The slant tubs could turn clothes into a rope. The single belt machines do rinse better than the three belt design. I hope mine keeps working for a long time.
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