AEG washing machine - help sought

[Timothy Murphy]

I have an AEG Oko-Lavamat 605 washing machine, and I am trying to take off the front cover to remove something from between the disks.

The machine suddenly developed a scraping noise, and when I asked at my local AEG dealer/maintainer he told me that the problem was almost certainly something (he suggested a bit of a bra) caught between the two drums, rather than a bad bearing as I had supposed.

He told me, rather vaguely, that I could get at the space between the drums by removing the front panel.

I have removed two bolts at the bottom of the panel, and this allows the bottom of the pane to pulled out for a few inches, But something - I do not know what - is holding the top of the panel. I don't think it can be a bolt, as the panel opens to about 20 degrees.

If anyone knows how to remove this panel, or has any suggestion of what I might try, I should be most grateful.

[Timothy Murphy]

Replying to myself, I managed to remove the panel; I found it was held by 2 more screws at the top, hidden under the control panel, which had to be removed to undo them.

Unfortunately, I found that removing the front panel did not give me access to the space between the drums, so I am resigned to calling in the AEG expert to solve the problem.

[Part timer]

To remove random objects, you may be lucky and be able to remove them through the connection to where the drain-out pump joins the outer plastic tub which houses the metal drum that actually spins. If not, then it's a case of splitting the platic tub in the middle (there are about 9 screws IIRC around the circumference. You need a deep socket for those and to remove most of the innards of the machine. I had to do it in 2007 for changing the bearings and seals. You can tell if those are shot by the presence of rusty water stains around the back by the large pulley. Perfectly possible to do, I bought a Haynes book and kissed goodbye to a fair amount of TV watching/ newspaper reading time. The satisfaction was plumbing it back in and running an empty cycle. Good luck.

[Ben Willcox]

I had a similar problem with an Indesit machine, which had a cable-tie trapped between the two drums (and also had faulty bearings as it turned out). I found that by shining one of those '10 gazillion candle power' type torches into the back of the machine, the opaque plastic drum became transparent, and by slowly turning the inner drum by hand I could clearly see between the drums by looking through the door. The cable-tie could then be extracted from the bottom drain hole with the help of a thin screwdriver and a small child.

Thanks, Ben

[Thomas Prufer]

Number 25, wot is in German, which you may be able to read or babelfish...

If not, let me know.

Thomas Prufer