Motor Doesn't Work

[Curious]

Excellent advice I've seen so far but can you give me a few direct pointers to try and resolve my problem?

The washing machine is about 12 yrs old. On the 3rd wash today the wife noticed the clothes were still sopping wet. The water had pumped out, but the motor had not driven the wash or spin cycles. The belt is fine. What should I look at next? If I take the motor off and check the brushes will it be immediately obvious that they are faulty?

Is it likely there is a power supply failure to the motor, should I check the feed to the motor with an AVO? What pins/sockets should I check and what value should it be? If the power supply and the brushes are good can I do any other checks on the motor or is it just a straight replacement. Many thanks in advance.

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

If carbon brushes are the cause of your fault, you should find at least one of them charred and sooty. If they are both nice and shiny (even if they are worn down low) they must be making good contact and are probably not the cause of this fault although they would clearly need replacing as soon as practicable.

You don't fault find washing machines with an Avo meter, it's dangerous, you need a continuity test meter. Usually the motors have pairs of tags on them so you can test for continuity accross them. If all tags are in a line they are often still in pairs. However, they are often not in pairs because the filed coild often has 3 connections, this means there are an odd number of tags so you need to either know which ones are the armature, tacho coil and field coil, or work it out.

Hopefully it is just the brushes though as at 12 years old they should be pretty worn.

Here's some carbon brush diagnostic help, although written for Hotpoint motors, the principles should help no matter which make you have if they have carbon brushes fitted - Carbon brushes diagnostic advice

[Curious]

Thanks for the rapid response. I took the back off and unbolted the motor to get access to the brushes. I removed the brushes and both were very worn. There was lots of carbon dust around the ends and this appeared to be causing the brushes to stick. I exercised them a little and the springs then pushed them out. I reassembled the motor and it runs OK now but the brushes will need replacing imminently.

Thanks for your advice, hopefully it will save me some money and an ear bending from the wife.

Cheers. PS if I cannot get them locally would you be able to get hold of some?

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Now you've established the carbon brushes were worn by getting the motor running, replace the brushes before using the washing machine. Worn carbon brushes may run for a while, but cause excessive sparking which can short out and damage either the armature in the motor or the control PCB.Here are some places you can order carbon brushes and other washing machine spare parts online -

• Appliance spare parts (4Washerhelp)
• Hotpoint & Creda carbon brushes page