The Washing Machine and I, Part 2

When we last visited our little mechanical hero, it was spilling its guts all over the laundry room floor. You can read about that little adventure here. A little plumbing work, and we were back in action.

Alas, it's time for a new adventure. One wonders why adventures can't be in, like, Colorado, instead of in my basement. 'Tis a fallen world. . . .

Anyway, a couple of months ago Doris began complaining that the clothes in the washer were sometimes still wringing wet at the end of the wash cycle. Apparently, the washer was not spinning. It was agitating (quite agitating, in fact), pumping, but not always spinning. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't.

I figured it must be a cycle of the moon, or maybe just high tide. Surely it would correct itself soon. You remember from the last article my chief maintenance tactic: ignore it and maybe it will go away.

It didn't. In fact, eventually it stopped spinning at all, which precipitated a minor crisis. The crisis was not the washer, it was the laundry; we were both running out of clean-- never mind, you really don't want to know.

Here is the evidence, artfully arranged so as to hide any, ah, indelicate items.

Oh, look, there's a Bronco's sweatshirt on top! How on earth did that get there?

[Doris tells me that we're the only family in Greenville that puts their dirty laundry on the Internet.]

Okay, so last week I began to think about fixing the problem as obviously the tidal calendar had not helped. You can find anything on the Internet, and I found a very helpful site that was able to identify the problem. It was the clutch. Did you know that your washing machine has a clutch? And a transmission? Everything but a driver, in fact.

I ordered the clutch, and yesterday it came in. Just in time, too, as we had also run out of clean. . .  oh, never mind.

Did you notice the very helpful instructions? Can anyone translate, what, French? What happened to good old Spanish? Why French? Of course, I can't read Spanish either, but at least I would feel more at home. This is America, after all. Right?

Thankfully, there was a video on the web site, and soon I was delving into the bowels of my washer.

This thingamabob has to come out first. . .

followed by the whatsit. . .

Next up was fifteen minutes of very spiritual meditation. . .

My thoughts included such epistemological twisters as:

• How did I get myself into this?
• How will I ever get this back together?
• Maybe it's time for a new washer?
• I need to teach Doris everything I know so she can do this. Let's see, that would be righty-tighty, lefty-loosey.
• Is it too late to repent?
• Wonder if Larry Addis knows how to fix washers?
• Dirty clothes really aren't that bad.

Thankfully, I finally remembered the video on the web, and took a refresher course. I pulled the bad clutch. . .

and then installed the new one, and viola! The washer works again. Dor's already done several loads of laundry, and that thing spins like a politician in an election cycle. Not bad, not bad at all.