Appliance Repair Wisdom for the Ages

Friday, January 23, 2004

Your appliance is broken and your repair quest has brought you to Fixitnow.com. Your knees wobble and your bowels rumble as you contemplate doing the repair yourself. Since he is omniscient (and he knows it), the Samurai hears your question before you even ask it: "What am I in for if I decide to do this repair myself?"

Introducing Samurai's User-friendly Difficulty Scale (SUDS). Created just for Fixitnow.com Grasshoppers, the Samurai has developed a proprietary scale for rating the difficulty of appliance repairs. SUDS is based on the universally-understood six-pack: the more difficult a repair task is, the more suds it takes to get through it. So now, when I'm helping you do a repair, either in the Appliantology Group or in Live Help, I can quantify the difficulty of the repair task that lies before you using a scale we can all understand: SUDS. Simple. Intuitive. Fermented. That's the Samurai Way.

After you complete your repair using the myriad resources at Fixitnow.com or the Appliantology Group, you can return the favor and help the Samurai maintain his own supply of suds by giving to the United Samurai Beer Fund. Cheers!

SAMURAI'S USER-FRIENDLY DIFFICULTY SCALE (SUDS) for assessing appliance repair task difficulty
	Cake walk. You'll be done before your beer gets warm. This is simple stuff that requires few, if any, tools and almost no electrical skills.
	Not too bad, but you'll need a refill on your beer. You'll only need ordinary tools, nothing specialized. You may need a multimeter to make a simple continuity check.
	You'll need a little buzz to get through this one. Basic set of common tools and some specialty tools required. If it's an electrical problem, you'll need your multimeter and the wiring diagram.
	Get the kids out of earshot, adult language forthcoming. Settle in and get ready to spend some time on this one. No quick fix here, Hoss.
	A third arm growing out of the middle of your chest would be helpful. Time and pain, that's what you're in for here. If it's an electrical problem, get ready for a brain teaser. If mechanical, you'll be giving libations of your own blood from the skin scraped off your knuckles.
	What were the engineers smoking when they designed this damn thing? When you're done with this one, you'll probably want to hunt down the sadists who designed your appliance so you can give them a taste of the living hell they put you through.

3 Comments:

I own a Maytag LAT9416AAE washing machine. The agitator took forever to get rolling, belt was slipping excessively, I know it is supposed to slip somewhat. After investigation I discovered the drive pulley had a film of oil on the bottom + the underside of the machine had spatters of dark oil on the cabinet. Reason for slipping belt. My diagnosis is that the lower shaft seal on the transmission has failed. This machine does not get heavy use & I have owned it for about 6 years.
I would like your professional opinion, need to fix this thing, I am a fairly competent mechanic & could repair it if I don't need a $100 worth of special tools.
This is very frustrating, my old Whirlpool ran for 22 years with minimal problems. Will never purchase another MAYTAG PRODUCT.

I would like to breakdown the s/n as to date of manufacture, it is :
2312582OWB.

I am thanking you for your time & wisdom, great website.

Fred

By  Anonymous, at January 11, 2006 10:54 PM  

Get some bear and drink em down,

By  Anonymous, at January 20, 2006 10:57 PM  

Scoop a junked washer from the garbage. Fix that and press it into service while you tear down the Maytag.

I'm a big fan of the old belt-drive top-loading Maytags; they're tough as nails and routinely do 20 years in laundromats. The helical-gear (big balance weight on the transmission) are the best, but the orbitals (round transmission - I assume this is what you have) are almost as tough. It sounds like you got the one made at 4:55PM on a Friday afternoon.

Take the cabinet off the chassis. Take the tub/transmission off the chassis and lay them down on a piece of old carpet or some other padding. Pull the transmission's tailshaft off, then lubricate (with Maytag transmission fluid!) and replace all the O-rings; reassemble. Pull the top off the transmission and refill to the marks with Maytag transmission fluid; reassemble. Then reassemble the whole thing.

You can probably re-use oily belts if they're not frayed and you don't care if they squeal a little at first - I stick 'em into the (working) washing machine with hot water and loads of detergent!

Organizing well and with good hand tools, the first time will probably take about three hours, with experience, an hour and a half.

And yeah, it's a difficult job; just relax and keep the small parts organized.

Do make sure, of course, that you've got the right belt tension - the motor's little trolley must move freely against its springs.

www.glowingplate.com

By  Anonymous, at April 08, 2006 1:15 AM  

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