Hotpoint WD420?

[Harry Bloomfield]

Rather a confused tale, sorry...

She says that it sometimes just flashes all of the lights quickly. I saw it briefly - turned its power off at the mains, back on and it seemed to be back to normal.

I did just once get it show what I think is a fault code on its lights

- power light flashing slowly, with both 'rinse hold' and 'time saver' flashing much more quickly.

This next part might or might not be normal operation...

When it is on a dry cycle, when the motor runs all of the lights go out or flicker depending upon motor speed.

At the moment it is running fine (I think). It fills, heats the water, washes, pumps out, spins and the dryer heats etc..

Anyone know where to find a fault code list or etc. please?

[Andy Cap]

May help !

[Harry Bloomfield]

but thanks anyway.

I have now seen all of the lights flashing and several web sites suggest this means the main PCB is on its way out.

[Peter Andrews]

by installing new brushes in the motor. At less than 10GBP it's always worth trying.

Peter

[Harry Bloomfield]

Harry Bloomfield wrote on 30/10/2009 :

Several sites suggest the all lights flashing indicates a fairly common fault, which is a faulty main board. EMW Electronics suggests the same and supply refurbed PCB's for £44.90.

I tried to track down a local place from which I have got hold of used parts before for this machine, but could not find them in the phone book. Tried a more upmarket repairers just around the corner from them, to see if they would provide their name or phone number, but they were not very helpful. All they wanted to do was supply and fit a new PCB and a new mystery part for the grand sum of 2/3rds of the original cost of the new machine. They were not even willing to offer the PCB to me, far too difficult for DIY replacement said they.

So I pulled out the main PCB and took a good close look at it. Round the back of the machine, you remove a small oval plastic cover, remove the self tapper below it which retains the PCB's casing, then take off the much larger belt/motor access panel too wiggle out the PCB in its white case. C17, a 680uF 10v electrolitic cap had some mild signs of swelling on top, so I replaced it with new 1000uf 10v from stock.

It is on its third test run at the moment, with no sign of the fault recurring. Far too difficult indeed.

[Dave Liquorice]

But the place you went to would be assuming that a slug would have the same amount of electronics and component level fault finding as you.

This is patently not the case but most of the population wouldn't have been able to work out how to remove the PCB let alone fault find it down to component level.

[Harry Bloomfield]

I would never make an assuption that the person I was speaking to knew any less than me. I always try to find out first, so I can talk to them at their level.

It is still working fine - so that's over £200 saved, for the outlay of a couple of hours of effort, plus a 20p capacitor and me in the good books for at least a week :-)

[Dave Liquorice]

But that could well just provoke a lot of WOOOSHHH...

That's better. I get the sneaky feeling that the shop wouldn't have been able to do more than a board swap. Trying to fix it at component level would beyound them and possibly even beyound their comprehension. Youngsters have grown up in a "throw away" society, summat breaks you chuck it and buy another.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I have replaced the two triacs on the driver board in my Hotpoint washing machine (IIRC, they were under a quid each) - I couldn't even be bothered to work out which one was dead. A repair shop would have replaced the board (something like £40) plus labour.

The triac was blown by either a dying motor brush or a broken wire in the motor wiring loom (I can't now recall which of those incidents it was, although I think it was probably the brush).

The broken wire was fun - it was the field winding connection for normal running. The result was that as it made occasional contact, the drum managed to achieve 1 or 2 revs/sec only. As it ramped up though the profiled spin speeds, 400, 600, 800, 1000, it was actually only doing about 2 revs/sec. However, the 1400RPM uses a separate field winding connection which still worked fine. So in the final step from 1000 to 1400RPM, the damn thing nearly took off. It basically managed an almost standing start to 1400RPM in under

2 seconds when full with soaking wet load - you could see the whole machine tip up as it did it. I didn't think it would survive too many of those, so fixed it PDQ.