How to remove heating element on Miele washer

[heybobby]

Hi Andy,

This a great site you have here. So generous with your help. I wonder if you could offer me a little advice?

I suspect the heating element has gone on my Miele Prestige Plus 6 washing machine as it keeps tripping the electrics when it gets to a certain point in the cycle.

I saw the part can be bought and set out on taking the washer apart. Using some good info on here I managed to remove the front and sides and think I’ve located the heater element. Now I’m stuck though - I can’t work out how to remove the heater element. Can you help at all?

 

Please see attached pic, have I got it right, is this the heater element?

 

Thanks,

Rob

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Cheers. I just completely rewrote my article about washing machine tripping electrics and put it up today https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/washing-machine-fusing-electrics/

There’s a link to another article in there called How to remove a heating element.  Looking at the photo though it looks different to most other heating elements. There may be a nut under that metal water guard though?

[heybobby]

Just took another look and can’t see a nut anywhere. I tried pulling on the guard but it’s not budging. Not sure what to do now.

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

It's difficult to see all the detail from the photo but clearly those round circlips come off. Circlips are carefully prized off with a thin flat-bladed screwdriver. They aren't always reusable though. They could break, or become too loose to hold when re-fitted.  I have to advise that if you can't work out how to get something out you are risking getting into big problems if you continue. 

[heybobby]

Cheers for the advice. I’ll have a bit more of a look. Looking at the new part on a spares site there doesn’t appear to be a bolt. Just don’t know how one would go about pulling it out as it looks like it would need quite a bit of force to budge and the drum moves when you pull on it.

Edit: sorry removed the link as I think it’s against the forum rules?

[heybobby]

Found a good YouTube video showing how to remove it. I’m going to give it ago tomorrow.

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Feel free to link to the video if you think it will help others. Let us know how you get on.

[heybobby]

Let’s see if this works, it keeps coming up with WordFence security so I’ve removed the https. Here’s the video: 

How to remove Miele heating element

 

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Thanks that's a very good video. It's as I said, those round circlips need to come off and they break when they do. Fortunately it says you get new ones with the heating element.  I would recommend you use a genuine Miele part

[heybobby]

Success! I got the sucker out.

 

...now to order the new one. I read something on another site about making sure the replacement is the right voltage. I’m presuming it should be ok if bought from a UK company?

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Excellent. Just buy from the link I posted earlier and make sure you pick the one for your model, and that says, “genuine part” and you can’t go wrong. 

[heybobby]

An update, the new element is in and the electric is no longer tripping, yay!

 

I found it quite hard fixing the new circlips. On the YouTube video he had a tool for it. I used a piece of cut off push fit pipe to hammer them down, which kinda worked. One fixed down tight straight away but the other was more fiddly and wouldn’t go down tight. In the end I resorted to carefully tapping around it with a screwdriver and hammer.

 

So I got the machine back together with just the top to go on and I clumsily managed to brake the plastic clips off trying to work out how to put it on, ah man! Didn’t even use much effort and they just sheared off. Anyway the machine is working, so that’s the main thing. Probably just fix the clips with some sugru.

 

Cheers for the help Andy and all the best.

 

 

[heybobby]

Oh yeah, for anyone else doing this repair,  here’s a tip. Turn the drum a little before you fix the heater in. There’s a small clip inside where the heater goes that fixes the heater down away from the drum, but it’s easy to miss it. You’ll know if you’ve missed it as it makes an awful grating sound when the drum turns! Thankfully I noticed this before I’d tightned the circlips.

[Whitegoodshelp (Andy)]

Yes it's vital to locate a heating element under the bracket at the bottom of the outer drum. Otherwise the drum will hit the heating element on spin when it has a heavy load inside.