Hi i'm josh from eSpares and in this video i'm going to be helping
you to diagnose motor problems in your washing machine.
Now in most cases motor problems
in your washing machine are going to be caused by worn carbon brushes.
These are designed to come into contact with the moving part of the motor which is called
the armature and pass power through it but they do wear down over time so
obviously they will need to be replaced.
How would you know if the brushes are worn.
If the machine is filling and emptying as normal but the drum isn't
turning or if it's making some sort of spluttering noise or if you can see
sparking coming from underneath the front of the machine these are all
likely to be caused by worn brushes and you need to replace them and you can see
how to replace carbon brushes in another espares video.
Now although that does cover most instances
of motor faults in a washing machine.
There are a few occasions where it may be due to the motor itself so for safety I've
unplugged this machine first and I'm just going to take the motor out of this
machine and we'll have a more close look at it to see where problems might arise.
Now I've got the motor out of the machine I've just popped it down on some
cardboard to protect both the motor and the top of the machine as well I'm going
to turn it on to its side and here we can see there's a multi plug with wires
going off to various parts of the motor and if we take a look at the first two
wires these red ones these go to a sensor here at the end of the motor
now this sensor takes a reading from the armature of how fast it's spinning and
that measurement is then sent to the control board and from that measurement
the control board can determine how fast the drum is spinning now as the sensor
is faulty it's going to take the wrong reading send the wrong measurement to
the control board and as a result the drum will spin very very fast and then
stop and that'll continue in a cycle if that's happening on your machine you can
test the sensor using a multimeter just by popping the probes of the meter into
either of the red terminals like so and for a working sensor I'd want to see any
reading that wasn't a short-circuit or an infinite reading and here I'm getting
a reading of about 70 to 71 ohms so if that would indicate that the sensor is
okay moving on to the next two wires we have a blue and a purple and these go to
the carbon brushes on either side of the armature here so if I just pop the
probes into those two terminals for a working connection here I'd want a
reading of somewhere between one and seven ohms depending on the type of
motor that I was working on and here I'm getting about five ohms so that would
indicate that it's okay and then we have three more wires here at the end of the
plug and these go to the field windings around the side of the motor and again
for a working connection I'd want somewhere between one and seven ohms so
if I pop it into these first two terminals
I'm getting about three and a half ohms these two about three ohms
and these two about one-and-a-half ohms so all of these connections are good and that would
indicate that the motor is fully functional now if when you test your
motor you get readings that are dramatically different to any of these
readings that would indicate that your motors got a fault and you're going to
need to replace the entire thing while you've got the motor out of the machine
it's a good opportunity to have a look at the carbon brushes as well and see
how worn down they are and you can just unscrew them either side here and just
have a look at how much material is left on them to determine how worn they are.
Spares for washing machines and other
appliances are available on the eSpares website thanks for watching.