tenplay wrote:
Tonight I was relaxing in the living room watching tv when I heard a
terrible commotion coming from the laundry room. When I asked my wife
about it, she shrugged and said that it was just the old Kenmore washer
acting up. I went to take a look and found the washer in its spin cycle
shaking like crazy. The only way I could get it to stop shaking was to
lean on it with my body weight. The Kenmore washer is about 10 years
old. Is it something easily repairable or has it seen its better days?
If I have a repair person make a house call, about how much should I
expect to pay for the repair? Thanks for any advice.

See if you can rock the machine. If you can, the fix may be as easy as
adjusting the legs with a thin wrench to make the washer level. It
should sit squarely on the floor with all four legs taking some
appreciable weight. You should do this step anyway, even if it doesn't
get rid of the shake.

Reach inside the machine and see if you can move the drum around
equally in all directions. If the drum doesn't move as much in a
certain direction, or it requires more/less effort to move it in a
certain direction, there may be something blocking/broken/loose with
the suspension system. The drum has to be free to move within limits
to compensate for unbalanced loads. I've seen bolts and other debris
wedge between pieces and prevent movement in that direction. If there
is limited movement it might be any easy fix and if you're reasonably
handy you might want to give it a go. Locate a specific manual online,
or a DIY site to walk you through opening the machine up and
troubleshooting.

Service calls aren't cheap, and an older machine might not be worth the
expenditure. Call up Sears appliance repair service - they'll tell you
the specific costs and conditions of service.

R