My wife and I bought our Maytag A208 washer and DE608 dryer in the late 1970s (used, about 2 years old at the time,$150 for the pair, the best investment of my life!). They have had very few problems, mainly replacing belts, rubber items, and the dryer heating element.
Yesterday, the washer was making a screech/grinding noise (and just humming at times) and a slight burning rubber smell at that point in the wash cycle when it should have been agitating (but there was no movement of the agitator). Yet it was able to perform the spin cycle just fine!
I spent most of the day looking for the problem, but found it wasn't the belt, motor, timer, etc, although I noticed I could just barely get the agitator/inner-perforated-tub to rotate using all my strength.
Thinking a sock or sum-such was jammed between the inner and outer tubs, I removed the top of the outer tub ... but found there wasn't anything stuck between the tubs.
While the outer tub's top was still off, I happened to try to rotate the agitator again ... suprise suprise!! ... it moved smoothly in either dirction with only moderate effort!
Thinking I had somehow magically fixed the problem, I put the outer tub top back on, but then found the problem returned ... it was extremely difficult for me to rotate the agitator!
I took the outer tub top off again and examined the inside surface ... I could see rub marks where the top of the inner tub was rubbing the inside surface of the outer tub top!
I re-installed the outer tub top again, making sure to not push down too hard. This fixed the problem and the washer runs just fine now!
Then I remembered that the last (previous) time we used the washer, we had a baby's sneaker jammed between the top of the outer tub and the top of the washer, and I had a hard time yanking it out. That probably pushed the top of the outer tub down in firm contact with the inner tub.
Thought I would post this in hopes it will be of use to others with the same problem.
Comes to the Rescue!
