The curious case of the AEG L69480VF and its extra spinning

[TimD]

We got hold of an AEG L69480VF around a month ago (replacing a decade-plus old Bosch which finally died).  If we use it for normal washes, it seems to do a spin and a final couple of slow rotations at the time its remaining time predictor has counted down to 1min, so we're thinking it's finished.... but then launches off into spinning again which may finish after 10 mins, or may go on longer (in which case we've stopped it after 15-20 mins or so just because it seemed to be getting silly; nothing should need to spin for that long and we were worried it was going to burn itself out), during the whole of which the countdown insists there's just 1 minute left.

AEG people have been to look at it several times now.  The first visitor took issue with the installers' carving some "fins" off the drainage tube to fit it into our drain pipe and claimed this could cause an airlock.  They fixed that (another visit) but it didn't improve the situation.  Then they changed the PCB.  That didn't help either.  Now they're making noises about maybe replacing the water sensor but since the machine isn't reporting any error code didn't actually think that'd do any good.

One thing which has become apparent is that if we do a simple test wash with no load and no soap... it works fine and stops when it says its going to with no extra spinning.  But if we put soap (persil non-bio tablets) in on a normal 30 degree super-quick load, it does this extra spinning.  Possibly the chance of whether it stops after ten minutes of extra spinning or not depends on whether one or two tabs have gone in; we need more tests to be sure though.

I'm not sure what to make of this. It seems flaky to me.  If the extra spinning definitely stopped after 10 mins we could probably put up with it, but the possibility of it just running on and on indefinitely makes us nervous and is not what we paid for.  I very nearly posted this on the "consumer issues" thread as I suspect we're going to end up stuck between John Lewis not agreeing to replace/refund until AEG admit it's genuinely bust, and AEG not officially admitting there's a problem with it (on the other hand, they're not reassuring us that the behaviour we're seeing is correct either).  But I'm also wondering if this is another one of these "future shock" things though, like the increased wash times of modern washers frequently commented on on this site (that came to a surprise to us too after the old Bosch!)... is this sort of extra spinning a "known thing" and we should just try some different soap or something?  Any tips?

Edited August 1, 2016 by TimD
not sure if "lavamat" name is used or not

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Hello Tim. Yes it is very curious this one. I have moved your post to the repair questions forum because ultimately it is discussing a faulty washing machine. There are quite a few modern washing machines that seem to suffer from sticking on the last-minute and it can be tricky to sort out.

If they have already tried replacing the main PCB then it is difficult to imagine what else could be causing it. Of all the places to stick, on spin is the rarest. Once it kicks up into a proper spin it should just literally spin for the programmed amount of time and nothing should really interfere with it one way or the other. There are things that can cause problems that would stop it from going into spin, but if it manages to go into a spin then it shows everything is working fine and there are no faults.

One thing that can cause issues is a bad load. Modern washing machines have out of balance protection and once it gets to the spin cycle this out of balance protection is constantly monitoring how smooth the motor is turning. If the wash load is out of balance than the motor will not run smoothly and this will stop the machine from spinning. It can cause a washing machine to get stuck on the spin cycle and constantly stop and then start up again. However, this issue will stop the machine from going into the proper spin or at the very least will restrict it to a quite slow spin. So if you mean that it does actually kick up into the proper fast spinning at a normal spin speed then it shouldn't be related to the out of balance system.

When you say you got hold of the washing machine do you mean you didn't buy it brand-new? And therefore it isn't under manufacturers warranty?