Washing machine making a loud noise only on spin

[James Onslow]

Hi,

My 5 yr old Creda w/m works fine except when it's on the last fast spin. Once it gets to this it makes an awful "clackety, clackety" - knocking sound which probably everyone in the whole block of flats can hear.

I have taken all the panels off. There seems to be no play in the drum or the motor. The fan belt is pretty tight. The spider looks fine. The concrete blocks are all secure. The suspension rods look fine (but that's as far as i could check with them). I got in the drum (as far as possible anyway!) but I cannot see anything between the two drums. So now I am stuck.

The noise seems to start as the machine picks up to a very high spin but occasionally it seems to 'knock itself out' and sometimes stops and the spin finishes quietly. It does sound as if there maybe something loose.

There is a tiny bit of brown on the outer drum below the bearings but not a great deal.

Can anyone help at all?

Many thanks, James

[Brian]

Probably one of the springs has broken. There should be two springs from the top of the drum, one to the front of the machine and one to the back. I temporarily fixed mine once using a short elastic luggage strap. Trust this helps Brian

[Chris O]

There was a thread on something similar back around mid March - see following link :-

of the replies suggested something like the following _________________________________________________________________

metal-on-metal

At the risk of sounding obvious, the only time that this happened to me was when a nail fell out of a pocket and went through one of the drum drain holes and jammed there scraping on the outer drum. The same effect can be got from coins, bra wires or other hardware. You may have to remove the seal and look with a torch, but I would check this before dismantling more of the machine! ___________________________________________________________-

HTH

Chris O

[Tony Williams]

[snip]

Our Hoover recently did something similar, a nasty clackety noise at the back end of the spin. Turned out to be curtain hooks inside the drain pump, no noise at all whilst the pump had water to pump, but rattling against the impellor during the last spin when the pump was spinning dry.

[N. Thornton]

One more possible explanation: Usually you get 2 springs holding the top of the drum. If either spring reaches the point where it momentarily stops being in tension, it makes a hell of a noise, out of all proportion to its little size. 2 causes for this:

1. out of balance load - will happen just once or twice
2. shock absorbers deteriorating - solution add some DIY shock absorbtion to the springs
3. Design feature/ limitation - solution as 2.

Regards, NT