{"id":65,"date":"2009-07-24T11:18:25","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T18:18:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/?p=65"},"modified":"2017-11-27T11:19:08","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T18:19:08","slug":"300-diy-clothes-washer-repair-trumps-1500-replacement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/24\/300-diy-clothes-washer-repair-trumps-1500-replacement\/","title":{"rendered":"$300 DIY clothes washer repair trumps $1500 replacement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our Kenmore (Sears 417.43042200) front-load washer recently vomited it’s rubber boot<\/a> out the door.\u00a0 Annie and I fixed it<\/a> with some great guidance from the Samurai Appliance Repair Man<\/a> (Fermented Grand Master of Appliantology).\u00a0 A load later it started banging like hell.<\/p>\n

With further guidance and beer it became clear to me and Liam — my 5.9 year old, drill-wielding assistant — that one arm of the spider bracket was cracked, that the inner stainless steel basket had scratched the sides and ends of the tub, and that the rear bearing was a bit grickly.\u00a0 Despite peaceful bouncing around the Sears customer stiff-arm departments (warranty, parts, parts PR, etc.), I failed to convince anyone there that the tub\/bracket assembly had failed under a parts warranty.\u00a0 They seemed willing to consider the possibility, but not without a site visit from a technician — for which we had lost patience and time.<\/p>\n

Instead, I ordered from searspartsdirect.com 1 replacement boot kit ($38.49) and 1 drum assembly\/spin basket ($200.99) with expedited shipping ($44.97).\u00a0 Thus, for $311.47 including sales tax, we were ready to repair (with only moderate cynical reservations about whether that $300 was why Kenmore juxtaposed Al and SS metals).\u00a0 I decided to put off bearing replacement since there didn’t seem to be much grease\/mung leakage (though I wonder about some of the mysterious whitish\/blue stains we’ve experience on our white\/light clothes…)\u00a0 With luck, we’ll get another few years out of it before having to disassemble again.<\/p>\n

The alternative seemed to be to junk\/sell the Kenmore and purchase a new washer that is (even more?) energy- and water-efficient.\u00a0 The Miele and Staber were recommended as not having such crappy engineering, but the price tags were scary: $1500-ish, at least.<\/p>\n

Here are some photos of our quite-satisfying Do-It-Yourself experience:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our Kenmore (Sears 417.43042200) front-load washer recently vomited it’s rubber boot out the door.\u00a0 Annie and I fixed it with some great guidance from the Samurai Appliance Repair Man (Fermented Grand Master of Appliantology).\u00a0 A load later it started banging … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecohome"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qtAj-13","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":339,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/econscience.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}