I moved into a place with a Maytag LA211 washing machine. It’s possibly 30 years old. Hard to tell, but it’s in fine shape, or was…
Well, after three weeks the danged thing stopped working. Everything works except the agitator mode, on both wash and rinse.
It fills. It drains. It spins. It just doesn’t agitate, and something is seized, because the belt squeals and smokes. It spins in spin mode just perfectly though.
I can’t find a manual on line, but I’m suspecting the transmission is toast. I’ll be looking into it this weekend, but you Dopers are a resourceful lot, so I figured I’d ask here.
I’ve had horrible experiences with Maytag appliances- including a refrigerator that they replaced 3 times and every time, it broke down with in 6 months. The first one broke down on the second day. I lost a lot of money on that fridge ( replacing food and emergency repairs) until after 18 months and 5 breakdowns involving 3 different units I cut my losses and threw it away.
As did my close friend that bought a very high end washer/dryer set-up. It broke down constantly, parts weren’t readily available and repairs took forever. She finally threw it away -It was worth way more than my fridge.
looking at an appliance parts site’s diagram for that washer, based on the description you’ve provided I wouldn’t be surprised if the transmission is shot.
Yup. Transmission, and there’s no damned way I could have figured out how to disassemble the machine and replace it myself. It had to be replaced through the top, using a special tool to pull the drum off: the drum that is counterweighted with concrete!
