Bosch Wfr3268Gb/05 Soap Drawer Melted!

[seanious]

Hi,

I have a Bosch WFR3268GB thats suddenly started to "yellow" the soap dispener front facia and the main front facia itself. I first noticed this two weeks ago when a boil wash was finished a slight yellowing of the draw assy. I pulled the drawer out of the housing and noticed that the plastic has in fact melted. During the last two weeks of use, the melting is getting worse and as such has damaged the main front facia.

I would normally just replace these items, however I've just seen how expensive they are, and the main facia doesn't appear to be available anymore, ie i don't want to replace these for the same thing to happen again.

At this time, I'm suspecting the temperature sensor in the heating element, but surely this would have some input to the system on a 40 degree wash too, but that appears fine. The wife also noticed one day steam pouring out of the drawer, which also leads me to think maybe the drawer wasn't closed properly.

The drawer is that bad now i cant close it.

If anybody has had similar issues to mine I would love to hear from you...

Kindest regards

Sean

[swervo]

Yes.

Just happened to me yesterday. I was doing some washing on a 40 degree cycle. My daughter says there is steam coming out of the soap drawer (which we have never used btw).

The machine appeared to have just set itself to a boil (or even hotter it seemed) wash and it was so hot that the front of the soap drawer had melted.

It's a good job my daughter didn't touch the machine as it was absolutely boiling, god knows what would have happened if we had been out - I think it may well have caught fire.

We turned it off and left if for a few minutes then put it on again thinking it would reset itself only to come back a few minutes later to find steam pouring out of the soap drawer again.

So this time I turned it off and waited for the safety latch to turn off before opening it and letting it cool down properly (and we turned it off at the mains too).

I scalded myself on the soap drawer it was that hot and, needless to say, the clothing inside was completely ruined.

I'm going to scrap the machine as I don't think it is worth getting it repaired after this experience and it must be 5 or 6 years old (and the soap drawer has melted shut).

It's a Bosch Classix (I think) the model number is:

WAE24162GB/03

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Overheating like this on a washing machine made in the last 10 years or so is unusual because they should all have systems in place to prevent overheating. They are usually run using software which monitors the temperature and triggers an abort if it gets hotter than it should. Many washing machines will abort and start pumping the hot water away whilst at the same time adding cold water to cool it all down to safer temperatures.

So in theory this shouldn't be possible so there's either something serious gone wrong with the safety monitoring or there's some design fault or flaw which has allowed it to overheat.

[seanious]

Thanks for the replies guy's. I would have replies earlier but I have been on Exercise in the Far East for the last 3 weeks.

Right, I'm going to replace the thermister that sits in the water heater and see what happens. The machine was on a 60 degree wash and i couldn't touch the door. I'll let you know how i Get on.

Kind regards

Sean

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

On 24/10/2014 at 10:36, seanious said:

.. I'm going to replace the thermister that sits in the water heater and see what happens. The machine was on a 60 degree wash and i couldn't touch the door. I'll let you know how i Get on.

In theory, if the thermistor is faulty, the software running the wash cycle should detect that it can't get a reading from it and abort the wash cycle. If it gets a reading but the temperature doesn't rise and report a gradual increase in water temperature it should also abort thinking the water isn't being heated up. It's not an expensive part so might be worth trying, please let us know how you get on and consider using my affiliated major spare parts site Ransom Spares

[seanious]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

I took out the old thermister, and compared the resistance in both the old a new, first in free air, and then in a bowl of hot water. They measured pretty much the same resistance so I don't think that this is the issue.

I don't have a circuit diagram of the board or know where I could get one, so I'm going to have to do a small bit of reverse engineering. I've noticed that there are two relays on the board, a 5A and a 10A, of which I beleive the 10A is for the water heater. For the cost of the two relays (less than £2 each for genuine) i'm going to replace them both.

I might even probe the coil of the 10A relay and see if it is being commanded to come on or not. If it isn't then it could be a sticky relay which is unlikely.

I have to say I'm gutted. I bought this machine for just over £600, and it's lasted only 7 years, not what you would expect from a bosch premium machine, also I wonder whats happened to their support and how long they keep spares for? The main bessel on the front is no longer available (its melted).

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Bosch have gone budget to mid price and are not the high quality top end brand they once were. They still have a good reputation but selling basic models at less than £300 means they can't possibly be the brand they once were when they built washing machines like tanks. Most manufacturers are bad at keeping spares now, they are all likely to view control panels as only cosmetic and virtually never stock them as spares. I believe they only have to stock functional spares and whilst it was once for at least 10 years (and I often many many years beyond that) these days I think most of them will only keep spares for several years which is testament to how long they expect them to last.

Let us know if you fix it