Lifespan of a washing machine

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Bonefishblues
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Re: Lifespan of a washing machine

Post by Bonefishblues »

kwackers wrote:
Tom Richardson wrote:I think spin speed has a lot to do with it. Ive stuck one with a 600rpm spin speed back together with epoxy glue in the past (the big pulley on the back of the drum) and it lasted nearly a year. The one we've got now has 1400rpm spin speed. Ive never looked inside it but guess there's some clever stuff going on to achieve that without it falling apart.

My Bosch has a 1400 rpm spin speed - you'll never see anything like 1400.

Is my edit accurate then (genuine question) and top speeds largely academic?
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mjr
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Re: Lifespan of a washing machine

Post by mjr »

I hate you all! The motor bearings on my 15+-year-old C-rated washing machine have just given up and apparently enough of the gubbins would need replacing to renew them and the parts would be mostly old stock (so more expensive than for a recent machine) that a good new A-rated machine is only about £20 dearer from the co-op. I think the old machine may have been reading this and decided it was time for a rest. :lol:

The repair man (sorry, appliance maintenance specialist) said that the old one had probably lasted that long mainly because it was relatively low spin speed of 1000rpm.
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kwackers
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Re: Lifespan of a washing machine

Post by kwackers »

Bonefishblues wrote:Is my edit accurate then (genuine question) and top speeds largely academic?

No, you can see the top speed if the load is light and made of smallish items that don't all clump together.
The machine does a lot of clever stuff, if you watch it you'll see before it spins it does a bit of turning back and fro to try and break up any clumps of clothes, then it'll start fairly slowly and speed up as the water load drops.

The usual reason they give any trouble (as someone mentioned above) is overloading. If they're overloaded the load is unlikely to be well balanced, the machine will spin slower and the bearings take more of an hammering (along with vibration of all the other gubbins).
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