Hi! I've got a problem with my Hotpoint WDL520 and looking for advice. I recently put in a load of towels (read: heavy, wet) and left it to wash and dry while I went to work. I came back and the machine had flipped a breaker (I think when starting the spin cycle - there was still water in the drum, but not much soap).
I manually released the door lock, turned the socket off, reset the breaker, and turned the socket back on. The program came up fine, I switched it to 'pump out', closed the door, and the breaker flipped again immediately (with the door re-locked).
I had a problem a couple months ago where the motor was causing a short - I had cleaned it out with some compressed air, which seemed to solve it at the time, so I thought it was the motor again, but I disconnected the motor and got the same short.
I reconnected the motor and went through the other connectors, disconnecting and seeing what would reproduce the short and found that if I unplugged the heater coil (pink wire pictured here), the washing machine would run (tested just for a few minutes) without shorting.
I disassembled the dryer enclosure (pictured) and found the coil to be quite wet. I tested the resistance of the heater coil (both with the pink wire connected and disconnected) and got 45 ohms. I'm currently letting it dry to see if this changes.
So - questions. Is this a normal resistance for the heater coil? Should I replace it? If this is normal, is there some other current-limiting component that may have failed that I should look at? If this ends up being an expensive repair, can I wash with the machine with the wire disconnected without causing more damage?
Thanks for any help!