Monthly Archives: May 2006

Replacing the Hub Seal Kit on an Amana Washer

If you’re contemplating taking on this repair, welcome to HELL! Some wise appliance techs (hey, is that an oxymoron?) discuss their experiences with this trial-by-fire in this topic and this one at the Samurai Appliance Repair Forum.

You’ll need the hub seal kit, which you can buy here. It comes with complete instructions. The Amana washer service manual is a highly recommended job aid. And an extra pint of blood.

On the world-famous SUDS-o-meter, this job is off the scale.

To learn more about your washing machine, or to order parts, click here.

Kenmore SxS Refrigerator, Beer Compartment Warm… Mayday! Mayday!

This applies to the Whirlpool-built Kenmore refrigerators, the three-digit prefix on the model number is 106.xxxx.

The situation here is that the freezer is at design temp, defined as 0F, but the beer compartment won’t get cold no matter where you set the temp control. There was a service flash out on these units. Condition was that ice would bind the baffle gate when in the closed position and then break the linkage when it tried to open. Result, no cold air in the beer compartment. But, hey, don’t you go frettin’ cuz, as always, Samurai’s got the cure. You need to install the upgraded air baffle assembly.

Appliance Repair Radio: Appliance Service Calls

Listen to our podcast or we'll tell all your friends that you pick through their trash.Samurai Appliance Repair Man and Mrs. Samurai take you on a wild romp into the seedy underbelly of the appliance repair world. In this episode, we explain what to look for in a decent appliance service company and how to avoid getting screwed in an appliance service call.


Listen to this episode | Podcast homepage | Podcast RSS feed

GE Refrigerator Ice Dispenser Door Not Opening

Jedi Appliance Guy explains what’s going on with this annoying ice dispenser problem and how GE is trying to sleaze out of doing the proper repair on their typically-shoddy products.

Yanno, you people who go shopping for the cheap GE crap at the big box stores, like Home Depot, deserve to be burdened with these problems. We know who you are: you’ll drive 100 miles to save five bucks on an appliance and then piss and moan like a brat in a toy store when your cheap GE crap breaks down.

Still Blogging After Six Agonizing Years!

Just realized that this month marks my six year anniversary of blogging about (mostly) appliance repair topics. How do I do it? More importantly, WHY do I do it? I still wonder that as I swill cheap beer and pick black flies out of my nostrils. I mean, sure, making two-bits a day and all the water I can drink is certainly more than generous compensation for what I do here but, after six years, there has to be more motivating me than just material compensation. I think it comes down to sheer boredom. I mean, what the hell else would I do? Ok, I could go back to my old job of licking urinals at the Texaco but, somehow, that job left a bad taste in my mouth. So, guess I’ll just settle in for another six years. Well al-l-l-lrighty then.

No heat in Maytag model MDE9700AYW dryer

Hot tip on this problem from our friends at Maytag:

A poor connection between the wire terminals and the heater relay causes high current draw and damages the terminals on the heater relay on the main control board.

The correction is to replace the main control board as well as both 1/4″ female tin terminals on the wire harness and any damaged wire.

Production changes for units made after Feb. 25, 2005 have corrected this problem.