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.

excellent site:
http://applianceguru.com/forum2/8.html

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.

"tenplay" wrote in message
. ..
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.

It could be a spring that holds the drum or something along those lines.
Expect to pay $100 or more for a service call, plus parts. At 10 years, it
is nearing the end of its life, but could still work another 2 to 5 years
too. How well does it clean?

If you are fixing it yourself it's probably worth doing. If you have
access to a junk pile you probably have a broken tub spring,
If you have to pay for repair the money would best be put towards a new
machine.
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.

Edwin Pawlowski wrote:
"tenplay" wrote in message
. ..
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.

It could be a spring that holds the drum or something along those lines.
Expect to pay $100 or more for a service call, plus parts. At 10 years, it
is nearing the end of its life, but could still work another 2 to 5 years
too. How well does it clean?



It seems to clean well enough. My wife says now that it has been
shaking like this for a long time. Guess I just wasn't paying any
attention to the noise before. I hate to sink money into the old
machine. Maybe we'll just keep using it as is and replace it when it
doesn't work well anymore. Since it is only the two of us (kids are
grown), it's used only once or twice a week anyway.

wrote:
If you are fixing it yourself it's probably worth doing. If you have
access to a junk pile you probably have a broken tub spring,
If you have to pay for repair the money would best be put towards a new
machine.
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.
..
Some washers seem more prone to unbalancing of the still wet clothes
during spin cycle and then shake or even move around. Stop the machine
and manually redistribute the clothes. But replacing that restraining
spring should not be a big job?

And gee if it still washes ok you might avoid replacement by the
purchase and installation of a $5 dollar part?

Our washer is now some 25+ years old and incorporates the tub from a
washer that was thrown out** by a relative about ten years ago!

Noticed recently a slightly wonky timer contact? that sometimes causes
the washer to not complete its spin cycle. Even if it's necessary to
replace the timer we've got a scrapped one somewhere or can fix that
contact of the existing timer for another four/five years use!

Our dryer btw is 44+ years old. We bought it when our first child, now
the departmental manager of large company, was in diapers and they were
freezing onto the clothes drying line back in 1962!

On the other hand if you are going to have to pay someone to repair it
maybe just as well to buy new? Those Chines/Italians/Mexicans/Indians
etc. make some pretty good stuff anyway. Cos even if your machine is
'assembled' in, say, North America, many of the components come from
elsewhere. We were told by people within the appliance industry that
one reason that** certain washers were scrapped some ten years ago was
because of a bad batch of steel in the agitator shafts from IIRC,
Brazil!

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.

Is this for real? Did you redistribute the
clothes in the washer? Read the manual?

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