Removing front of Bosch Maxx washing machine?

[dmc]

Parents have phoned - their washing maching is making a nasty knocking sound on spin and before scrapping it or getting someone out to look at it dad wants to try to get the front off and check it isn't something simple like one of the springs has come loose.

Apparantly when they had a problem before a bosch guy came and "fiddled with something on the front and then pulled the entire front panel off"

Anyone know how this works? Dad claims to have removed the few obvious screws but can't shift the front panel. I suspect some combination of lifting and pushing in just the right location is needed - any hints?

I've not looked at it myself and won't be able to get there for a while

Machine is apparantly a Bosch Maxx WFL2450.

Cheers,

Darren

[NT]

The first place to look would be the top and the bottom really, check the tub suspension & weight. For the front... iirc there are some screws along the bottom under the plastic kickstrip, which I think slides off after one screw's removed. Top fixings I think are under the white bezel - remove the drawer to get screws out to remove that. I cant remember whether there were more screws part way up accessed from the interior. As you may notice my memory isnt anywhere near 100% on this one.

Knocking on spin is either:

- spider broken - test by lifting the drum, see if it moves easily toward the outer tub. Rotate the drum as it may only move one way if damaged.

- tub suspension failure or weight come loose

- drum bearing failure

- or just an overloaded machine

NT

[dmc]

Fantastic - I relayed that info to dad over the phone last night and he managed to remove the front. The sliding kickstrip was the key bit. Cheers :)

Doesn't appear to be anything obvious apparantly :-( Was hoping for something.

They are now pondering if they want to pay bosch 139 quid to fix it or just to kill it off and buy a new one. Problem is it's been good and was a fairly expensive one to start with. Downside is it's 10 years old!

Cheers,

Darren

[NT]

Once its reached that economic watershed the logical thing is to bodge it. Adding damping to suspension is quite easy, it can be done with rope sliding over smooth surfaces, and usually fixes the problem. There are also other ways with rubber etc.

While you're at it, gluing triplewall cardboard over much of the inside of the outer shell can really cut down the noise level.

10 years is far from game over, but I've pretty much resigned myself to accepting that saying so is pointless. In all it should cost you about =A31 to fix.

NT

[Mark]

To the OP: What kind of floor is the machine sitting on? They are designed to work best on solid floors and when I moved mine (with a similar problem to yours) from a suspended floor to a solid one then the problem went away.