My 12year old Candy washing machine started banging like a pnuematic drill on spin cycle. This got slowly worse and the vibrations caused it to make a bid for freedom down the hall. The noise was really loud , quite frightening with a heavy load in like towel in for example.
My special super power is the mis-guided belief that I can fix anything. If its been built by a man , I can unbuild it , identify the fault ,then decide on a cost / time / longevity based formula if its worth fixing
So I purchaced 2 x new dampers for the princely sum of £16 delivered . Looked similar but not exactly the same in the pictures but the shop ( 4CandySpares) quoted the correct model

Set too on boxing day in removing old ones . So many sharp edges and swarf on the blind side of drilled holes after an hour or so of struggling and many paper cuts to my hands the old ones were out. Substantially different. Old ones offered next to no resisitance , new ones almost impossible to move by hand
Different mounts, different bolts , new ones had a bullet like plug with a one way lug to save pence. Bushings different diameter too. dismantled old ones and crossed over a few parts to get tham as close to ones I removed . There ws maybe 2mm play on each damper from the bush to eyelet
Ran it up last night after struggling to refit the new dampers . More cuts to knuckles and quite alot of swearing later it was all back together . Cue a cacophany of cliking on every rotation of the drum , and the inevitable earthquake replica on spin cycle.

My not so super-powers let me down . Candy spares let me down . Its off the skip in half an hour once I have taken out the 25kg of concrete blocks. I suppose 12 years is good for a non German machine, but not being able able to get the correct parts means its heading for the dump. When all the other parts are perferctly fine.

Fortunatly I have a Bosch in the garage as a spare, which I will be struggling up the stairs with later today.

sounds more like drum bearings.

We’ve got the same problem with our 5 year old Bosch washing machine, so German machines are just as susceptible to failure. British gas are coming tomorrow to see if they can repair it, I haven’t got the time to mess about with it and the white goods service plan does come in useful.

We’ve got the same problem with our 5 year old Bosch washing machine

ditto and I sort of like a good poke and fix but discovered that on a Bosch’ can’t access bearings without breaking open work one way only clips used when built so reckon they will announce dead ie you can open it up but can’t close it – hopefully not and I’m wrong and hopefully get a proper discount on new one if right

Did it form a connection with The Boss during a wash in the evening? 😉

I once had a machine which did the same and after 16 hours of disassembly, fixings some sheared bolts which held the bearing mechanism on (needed drilling out of old bolts and retapping threads) then reassembly which cut my hands to ribbons it all worked fine again for a number of years.
I did it to save money and was really successful. But it was a nightmare and an engineer wouldn’t have gone through the effort I did, it wouldn’t have been economical.

Doesn’t sound like worn bearings to me, my current machine has worn bearings and it just sounds noisy rather then jumping around. I won’t bother fixing this one, just going to order a new one.

Do you want a banging Dance Tunes podcast to go with that next time you turn the machine on??

Let me know, I’ve got some banging tunes all primed.

Sometimes when fixing stuff you just have to take a loss, when that happens I try to think of the things I’ve kept going.
One highlight was a washing machine with a cracked drum housing. I cut a hole in the side of the machine and repaired the crack with superglue and a patch of glass fibre. It ran for years and the hole couldn’t be seen when under the counter.
Another win is the toilet flush repaired with a headset top cap and an old car headlight switch.

I try to think stuff like that offsets some of the repair fails.

When the bearings on mine died…..they were noisy for three years

Then on the day they died it jumped around so much it removed the worktop fromm the utility units.

Still worked -was just in danger of knocking down the whole utility room

Does it dance like a white guy or a black guy?

Don’t you know this is how the VW Beetle was invented?