This morning, our Sears 80 series washer 110. 82380800 suddenly failed.
Looking for some guidance on what the problem may be. It fills normally,
does not agitate, but simply drains again, then refills, drains, and appears
to repeat this process over and over. I set the water level to considerably
lower, and now it is agitating. What might have caused this, and do I still
have a problem waiting to surprise me again? By the way, we have had this
washer for just over 20 years.

- Phil

I don't think so, as I tried fiddling with it some more, and reset the water
level lower. Now it works! What happened, and is a failure of some kind in
my near future?

- Phil

wrote in message
...
On Sat, 3 Feb 2007 09:58:13 -0800, "Phil"
wrote:

This morning, our Sears 80 series washer 110. 82380800 suddenly failed.
Looking for some guidance on what the problem may be. It fills normally,
does not agitate, but simply drains again, then refills, drains, and
appears
to repeat this process over and over. I set the water level to
considerably
lower, and now it is agitating. What might have caused this, and do I
still
have a problem waiting to surprise me again? By the way, we have had this
washer for just over 20 years.

- Phil


Coupler? Look for little bits of ground plastic under the machine.

You have a Kenmore belt drive washer, a platform that is no longer
produced, but parts are widely available. There are magnetic coils
mounted to the gearcase which control various actions in the washer.
One operates agitation/spin action, and the other operates the pump.
Your problem is some aspect of the pump action. The default position
is for the pump to drain out. When the coil is energized, a lever
moves and switches the mechanical pump into a different position, in
which it doesn't pump out the water. So, what is probably hapenning
is that one of the following is broken:

Wiring to the coil that operates the pump lever, check hot side and
neutral side for breaks
The coil itself, which operates pump pump lever position
The plunger that is inside the coil
The pump

My experience shows that the most common problem is the first one.
Since default is for the pump to be in drain position, then once the
washer goes from fill into agitation, then it will start to drain at
the same time, and when the pressure switch sense lack of water, it
will start to fill again. Once you fix the reason that the pump isn't
switching to "maintain water" position, then it won't empty at the
wrong times. If the problem is the wiring, then you can either fix
the wire using your own supplies, or you can buy a nifty wire kit
(IIRC, 285610) with wires ready to be spliced. Make sure that your
connections are not near the coils, since there is a lot of movement
in this area and connectors won't hold.

Just a little correction: The coil that operates pump action also
operates agitation; when it is energized, it makes the washer agitate
and the pump drains when it is not energized. So, your problem still
points to this area. The other coil only operates spin action.

But then again, I could be wrong. If the washer does agitate at
certain times, then that coil has to be ok.