Kenmore electronic temp control

[acctforjunk]

I have a Kenmore Series 80 washer, Model 110.82882800. I'm not sure how old it is since it came with the house, maybe 15 years. It has "Electronic Temperature Control" and it's driving me nuts.

On "cold" wash, the cold water valve is always open, but the hot alternates on and off. This isn't a huge problem because it seems to want to make the water not so cold, and may even be behaving normally. I know it's actively controlling this because if I turn off the cold water supply, within seconds it closes the hot water valve.

Now if I switch to "warm" wash, the hot water valve is always open, and the cold water valve stays open for a few seconds....then turns off. Meaning "warm" wash ends up being scalding hot.

There's obviously nothing wrong with the valves. This control board is switching a TRIAC on and off to control one of the valves, but it's temperature judgement isn't that good.

Any suggestions? Is the thermistor known to go bad? The control board visually looks ok. I don't even have an owners manual for this thing.

[nospamtodd]

Interesting problem, if what you say is true, that ETC (electronic temp control) works correctly in cold, but not in warm. Just an idea, but make sure your hot hose goes to the hot valve, and cold to cold as well. Make sure that velocity of cold and hot valves are the same, and that neither is plugged. Usually on the temp selector switch there are some non-ETC settings. It might be easier to choose one of those than try to fix the ETC. But there are really only two things to focus on: the thermistor and the board. You could change both if you want.

[hallerb]

with a 15 year old machine its probably better to replace the machine, and parts are likely expensive and hard to get at 15 years out

[uomo88]

You could always put a Y hose yoke connecting to your water supply and direct that to the inlet valve which stays open most often. Thereby for pocket change you can get the exact temp you want by opening the faucets accordingly...........just an idea!

[Tom]

It's a 1988 model. And it's designed to warm the cold wash to a final temp of about 70 degrees in ATC Cold as most soaps don't work colder than that. And warm is designed to be about 100 degrees which would probably feel scalding as it's pretty hard to hold your hand under water above 105 degrees. As another poster said, if you select manual warm or cold, the auto control shouldn't kick in and cold will be tap temp and warm about a

50/50 mix of hot and cold.

Tom G.

[acctforjunk]

Thanks for the info. The 70F for cold seems about right. But I measured my hot water temp at around 115F, and it's pure hot water on "warm". Maybe I'll try turning up my water heater as a test. Or, adding a resistor across or inline with the thermistor to drop the temp some.