This GE washer came with my new house in fall of 2002. It's worked well all that time, until just recently.
This model has two types of cycles - Whites and Casuals. My wife always uses Casuals. She noticed however that sometimes she'll come up and see that the dial is on the Whites side. Eventually we figured out that it's not stopping at the end of the Casuals cycle - it keeps going. Then she figured out that it was never draining, and it never went to the spin cycle. She would reset the dial to roughly the spin area (it's not explicitly labeled on this model) and that would usually do it. But eventually it just stopped draining completely.
I'm an engineer... I Googled it. The net wisdom seemed to say that it was either a bad timer, bad pump, or something stuck in the pump. I created a 120v cable and directly connected the pump to an outlet - and lo and behold, it drained the tub. When the tub drained, the spin cycle ran and all was good. I figured it was a bad timer, so I ordered a new one from Amazon for $103.
I installed the new timer today and did an empty short load - it worked!! I was very proud of myself. Then my wife went to run a small load, and it once again failed to drain!! Back to the drawing board...
So I hooked up my special 120v clips again, and drained the tank and ran the spin cycle. I figured that maybe the soapy water never drained, so I ran it back to rinse and spin again... it filled, agitated, and drained! It worked this time! And once it was drained, the spin cycle kicked in and it stopped at the end of the cycle.
Something here is intermittent. Or, for some reason it only works when the front panel is off? I'm guessing that a) the spin cycle won't run if the tub is full, and b) that if the tub is full at the end of the entire cycle, then it keeps going (ie, continues past the end of Casuals and enters Whites, starting all over again). So... is there a water level sensor? If so, then maybe it's flaking out?
What other diagnostics can I run here? Also, is there some way to know where to set the dial for spin when it's not explicitly labeled on the dial?
This model has two types of cycles - Whites and Casuals. My wife always uses Casuals. She noticed however that sometimes she'll come up and see that the dial is on the Whites side. Eventually we figured out that it's not stopping at the end of the Casuals cycle - it keeps going. Then she figured out that it was never draining, and it never went to the spin cycle. She would reset the dial to roughly the spin area (it's not explicitly labeled on this model) and that would usually do it. But eventually it just stopped draining completely.
I'm an engineer... I Googled it. The net wisdom seemed to say that it was either a bad timer, bad pump, or something stuck in the pump. I created a 120v cable and directly connected the pump to an outlet - and lo and behold, it drained the tub. When the tub drained, the spin cycle ran and all was good. I figured it was a bad timer, so I ordered a new one from Amazon for $103.
I installed the new timer today and did an empty short load - it worked!! I was very proud of myself. Then my wife went to run a small load, and it once again failed to drain!! Back to the drawing board...
So I hooked up my special 120v clips again, and drained the tank and ran the spin cycle. I figured that maybe the soapy water never drained, so I ran it back to rinse and spin again... it filled, agitated, and drained! It worked this time! And once it was drained, the spin cycle kicked in and it stopped at the end of the cycle.
Something here is intermittent. Or, for some reason it only works when the front panel is off? I'm guessing that a) the spin cycle won't run if the tub is full, and b) that if the tub is full at the end of the entire cycle, then it keeps going (ie, continues past the end of Casuals and enters Whites, starting all over again). So... is there a water level sensor? If so, then maybe it's flaking out?
What other diagnostics can I run here? Also, is there some way to know where to set the dial for spin when it's not explicitly labeled on the dial?