Tricity Bendix Washer AW 1400 W stopped working

[Johnny B Good]

Our 18 year old WM[1] refuses to run[2] any program and flashes/beeps the "End" lamp with an "error code" of 8 which isn't a listed code in the user guide. I've tried searching for answers using DuckDuckGo but, as per usual, internet search engines are utter s**te for this sort of info. I didn't even land up on any "User Fora" (good thing if you ask me since they're usually s**te as well - blind misleading the blind sort of thing).

The user guide only lists three 'error codes' 1 flash/beep for 'water not filling', two for 'water not draining' and four for 'Door open'. What actually happens when turning the selector to *any* program number is that it emits 5 flash/beeps after a few seconds delay before getting into its stride of repeating an 8 flash/beep cycle 'fault code'.

My 35 year old son checked out the pump and removed a small piece of plastic (looked like part of a clothes hanging clip) but, as I expected, it made no difference whatsoever (the impeller rotates freely enough). Now said offspring is behaving just like a "Millenial"[3] in offering to buy a new machine rather than await any further advice I might receive in response to this posting.

Unless the drum is a direct drive design (a proper servicing manual would have answered this - I guess I'm going to have to divorce it from the tumble drier to discover this by inspection), it feels like the drive belt may have snapped or slipped off the pulleys since I can't feel the expected amount of resistance when turning the washer drum manually. Even so, I'd have expected to hear the motor spin up briefly before the controller could sense such a problem and stop with a "Secret Fault Code" known only to Tricity Bendix accredited service engineers.

I'm posting here in the hope that one or more of this group's contributors is/are able to shed some light on the problem. I'd prefer to repair if practical rather than just do "The Millenial Thang" and simply replace without regarding the possibility of a cheap and relatively simple repair.

[1] As near as the XYL and I can figure it. It was a gift from her now estranged eldest son around 2000/2001 when he moved into a house which already had a fitted WM just a year or so after buying the AW 1400 W brand new (possibly a staff discount purchase at Curry's). This is the very first time that we've had any problem at all with the machine which replaced a still functioning 20 year old Service Quartz that I'd been able to maintain for very little expenditure (two drum bearing kits) by using a drum/spin motor I'd removed from a scrapped Bendix and suitable modification of the controller board to compensate for the different tacho pulse/rev calibration of the donor motor. [2] This happened after the XYL had started a wash cycle which had seemingly failed to spin dry the load. Her attempt to run the machine on the spin cycle resulted in the currently described symptoms. [3] This epithet is applied in the normal sense that even an armchair DIY enthusiast would understand. Sadly, my youngest does not have the excuse of age for this attitude. TBH, I think the offer to 'go online and buy a new machine' may be motivated by a sense of guilt, perceived from his mum's complaints over his overenthusiastic use of the washing machine and (in particular) the tumble drier during the past three months or so since he's been 'in between jobs' and staying at "The Hotel of Mum and Dad" full time rather than just at the weekends.

He's just started a new job somewhere near Birmingham just this week. Unfortunately, he's commuting rather than staying at a cheap hotel in the week so it won't make any difference to us other than the fact that now he's "earning again", he's likely to be more inclined to make a contribution to our housekeeping expenses.

[Peter Parry]

If the motor has brushes change those. Worn brushes are the most common fault in older machines. I'd be surprised if its lasted 18 years without previously had a brush change but given that they are common items and cost about £12 a set its worth trying. Once you have the motor out (usually 4 bolts) if the brushes are worn you may see the commutator is almost black.

Before replacing the brushes make a careful note of their orientation, some will go in either way around but get it wrong and it knackers the motor.

[chris.c.smith55]

Hi, this machine is fitted with the Zanussi EWM1000 electronic control system. That should enable you to get into the diagnostic mode, there are different types of facia so I cannot be more precise about the button pushing.

[Brian Gaff]

So do you want a councillor to help you with family relationships or a fixed washing machine? :-) That particular model was known for being very reliable I gather, but funny error codes does seem a little worrying.

Brian

[Johnny B Good]

Thanks Jim. The url was line wrapped which left me puzzled at first until I pasted the 2nd half onto the end of the bit I'd copied into my browser?s address bar.

There were some tantalising results after checking out all 9 pages (I was even motivated to take some photos of the W/M front panel to compare against one promising set of images on that Zanussi page but nothing remotely matched[1]). I've left the browser tab open on that page for now. As was hinted, it's likely to require a deep search to find a match, if one even exists.

In the meantime, I've managed to divorce the tumble drier from the top of the W/M (damn those nylon retaining bolts with their awkward to access hex heads with an open ended spanner, especially when using an adjustable spanner in lieu - it's like undoing nylock bolts 1/3rd of a turn at a time for each bite of the spanner and having to unwind them about 10 to

12 turns to release the retaining brackets).

I've looked at the motor brushes and connections and the drive belt via a largish square inspection hole in the plastic baseplate of the machine which all appear to as fitted in the factory (for an 18 years or older W/ M, it all looks remarkably pristine inside... so far, I've yet to remove the top panel)[2].

If my experience with the Service Quartz machine is any guide, I'd expect there to be a seperate "Motor Speed Controller & Relay" board or module somewhere deep within the machine's innards sitting between the "Front panel control & display" board and the motors and valve solenoids.

As yet, I haven't positively identified such a control module (a good candidate as a hideaway place for the odd safety fuse or three) since it looks like I'm going to have to remove that plastic base panel to delve deeper into the machine's guts to trace out the wiring and access things like heater element terminals and such before I can even start doing any basic continuity testing.

[1] The least unlikely match being the 14th one down, "AEG NexXxT" (5th from the bottom). [2] I did get to remove the top panel... just before teatime (6pm) and the machine is now laid on its side. I started work on the machine around 4pm and have been doing bits off and on including searching the uk.whitegoods site and writing this post.

I'm too old and unfit to be crawling on the floor to delve into washing machine innards these days just to access electrical terminals to apply the usual continuity tests. I think I'll try persuading my son to do the electrical testing after he gets home from work tomorrow (I can hold the torch for him and hand him the test meter). I've had more than my fill for one day. It was never quite this bad with the old Servis Quartz, but then again, I was a good 25 years younger back then. :-(

[Johnny B Good]

*Almost* black? :-) AFAICR, it was *entirely* black. However, it didn't look horribly burnt and the one brush I had sight of looked ok (but see below).

Thanks for the advice, Peter. I'm aware of the offset brush issue with some universal ac motors and the importance of correctly loading the pre- formed brushes (it's usually pretty obvious to the observant, which way round they should fit).

As I mentioned in my other post, the commutator looks like it needs the glass paper treatment despite not showing signs of 'burning'. the one brush I could see looked to be making contact. However, looks can be deceiving and a stuck brush that's not contacting the commutator might explain why I wasn't feeling as much resistance as I was expecting when turning the drum by hand.

Usually, it's possible to get some response if the motor is turned into different starting positions but this trick doesn't seem to work in this case. I'll try and get my son to climb into the machine tomorrow evening with a test meter whilst I hold the torch for him and rotate the drum to see whether he can measure armature continuity via the brush holder contacts. However the error code result of 82, according to the scheme used by Zanussi, doesn't bode well since it suggests a controller fault of some sort which may or may not be a trivial repair (not all controller faults need be beyond economic repair).

I've been dabbling off and on with this for about the last 9 hours, so I might make more progress after a good night's sleep. These DIY jobs don't go as slickly as they would in a well equipped repair workshop when you have all the business of divorcing a top mounted tumble drier as well as the usual problems of working in the confined space of a cramped utility room when all your tools need to be fetched from an upstairs "Home Office" as and when you discover the need to fetch yet another tool for the job in hand or yet another look at the ukwhitegoods.uk web pages for more inspiration and/or hints. It's hard work is this DIY. :-(

Ah well, I might make some actual progress tomorrow afternoon.

[Peter Parry]

The almost universal rectangular brush design looks OK even when almost completely worn. When you take it out you will probably find only a short length left. New brushes are something like 30-40mm.

The ones I've changed its has never been easy to tell when in the machine if the brush is making contact or not, Taking the motor out is usually so simple it isn't worth trying to test/inspect it in the machine especially if you have a black commutator.

Worn brushes make a huge amount of electrical noise and seem to delight in causing the controller to give all sorts of spurious error codes. Given the age of the machine, low cost of new brushes and commutator discolouration I'd take the motor out, visually inspect the brushes and almost certainly change them before trying to go much further.

[Johnny B Good]

Hi Chris,

That ties in with Jim's rather terse reply. It might have helped if he'd mentioned why he was pointing me at the precise page I needed on the ukwhitegoods.co.uk web site, since I skipped the identical 1st page worth's of spiel at the top of this and all other 8 pages which would have explained why Zanussi had *anything* to do with a Tricity Bendix AW1400W washing machine. No wonder he landed up in an argument with TNP's "Ghost"! :-)

My son found the button pushing sequence[1] on, he told me of all places, a FixYa web page using his smartphone's web browser. After a bit of head scratching over interpreting the flashes coming from the two LEDs, we finally agreed that it wasn't 26 or 62 as he'd initially mis- interpreted, but either 28 or 82 as I'd logically concluded, eventually settling on 82 due to Zanussi apparently choosing a "Little endian" number format (probably to throw off the casual DIYer to protect their 'trade secret').

Confusingly, the section dealing with the EMW1000 controler was titled;

"Reading The Fault Code On Non-Digital Zanussi Washing Machines".

which gave the impression that Zanussi made machines which were fitted with "non-digital" controllers, aka, analogue or ancient magic controllers.

It seems this confusing title could have been better expressed as:

"Reading The Fault Code On Digital Zanussi Washing Machines *marketed* under *other-brand-names*"

which would have better explained its relevance to other makes of washing machine such as my Tricity Bendix.

Anyhow, this code, taken on face value, suggests a fault on the controller itself. However, this could, for a Tricity Bendix AW1400W, mean something else entirely so it's still worth checking out "The Usual Suspects" such as worn brushes etc., before attempting removal of the controller for closer inspection.

[1] The button pushing sequence described to me by my son didn't exactly match the description given in the ukwhitegoods page but I haven't had a chance to query him on this since last night.

[Peter Parry]

If it's any help I've just found a set of new brushes

These were the "spares" for a machine which had a motor fail when a drum bearing leaked water all over it. New machine uses a brushless motor so they won't have any future use but are (obviously) "too good to throw away. Yours for free if you want them. If you do, a donation to cover postage to Remap (Remap.org.uk) would be appreciated.

[Johnny B Good]

It looks like we (my son and I) will be splitting the back half of the case apart once more (I knew I should have curbed his enthusiasm for reassembling it again so soon).

We tried to undo the base but that wasn't about to seperate even with all four screws removed. This inspired my son to track down a youtube video on how to split the case apart on a Zanussi which looked identical in almost every respect. This gave us far better access than I'd ever experienced with the Servis Quartz's removable back panel idea.

In view of the controller board fault, I'm very much in agreement with that idea after considering that the carbon coating on the commutator may have triggered an arcing event which may explain the BTB16-700BW triac turning itself into a 7.2 ohm resistor. The lad put a BTB16-800BW on order from a UK based ebay seller which just might arrive (postage free) by next Saturday.

Having finally unclipped the controller module free and wrestled with the plastic housing to release the PCB, I was rather nonplussed to see they'd incorporated not only the motor triac onto the board but also the four 12v mains voltage switching relays as well (all disposed around the

12 position rotary program selector switch to boot as well!).

That nicely explains the absence of a separate motor speed and relay controller board. Talk about slashing costs at the expense of good engineering practice - sheesh! What impresses me most is the seemingly inadequately sized circuit traces for the motor triac connections and other mains voltage feeds. I can only suppose they've used extra thick copper traces to compensate.

Anyway, despite testing all the drum motor connections to identify armature/fields/tacho coil winding connections and verifying that the brushes were still making reliable contact with the commutator, I'm going to pull the motor out to clean up the commutator with glass paper and, if necessary, rake out/undercut the segments as well as check the brushes.

Everything else checks out (pump motor - 160 ish ohms, heating element -

30 ohms and both water valve solenoids - 5k3 ohms each). The only weirdness being the door sensing 'switch' which didn't appear to function like the expected c/o microswitch. This got removed for closer inspection which revealed the origin of the oft mentioned 'mystery' NTC in most of the error code tables I'd been perusing.

This seems to be ok and functioning mechanically - the only way to fully test this is by applying full mains voltage with a 60W lamp as a dummy load (the famous NTC being the heating element of this thermally operated interlock switch assembly).

The contacts lacked any signs of overheating damage having only a thin coating of tarnish which wouldn't trouble 50Hz 240v RMS switching but I guess was enough to produce random readings that went from greater than

200M down to 1M ohms on my DMM. The 1M ohm reading is the value of the NTC heating element when at room temperature.

Since I'd already discovered the faulty triac on the controller board by this time, it seemed rather improbable that the door interlock assembly had chosen the exact same moment to have also gone faulty. Mind you, the state of the drum motor's commutator is probably no coincidence, hence my renewed desire to give it some long overdue TLC.

There's every chance that replacing the triac is all that will be needed to repair the controller PCB so that £5.34 investment is well worth a punt, especially as the rest of the machine (drum motor condition aside) looks as if it's never seen a day's wash in its life. With luck, I should have it working again by next weekend (possibly even sooner).

[Johnny B Good]

Thanks for the offer, Peter. I might take you up on it if I can't source a set locally (assuming I actually need a replacement set). I've got a spare set of brushes lying around but it would be just pure dumb luck if they'll fit. Our local white goods repair shop should have a suitable set in stock (or at least an oversize set I can rub down to size with a file, (assuming I can reload the existing brush holders). That spare set I think I still have might likewise be a candidate for the same treatment, assuming I'm not forced to replace the whole brush and brush holder as pre-assembled units.

BTW, it looks like error '82' does mean the same thing, "controller fault" since the motor triac (on the controller PCB itself) proved to be faulty. I'm expecting its replacement to arrive by next Saturday at the latest.

[Johnny B Good]

Quite right! I'm grateful for your taking the time to copy and paste that link to 'lead this horse to the water'. That was more than sufficient thank you very much. :-)

[Johnny B Good]

====snip====

Follow up to the report below:-

The Farnell order for a pack of five BTB16-700BWRG triacs that my lad had put in the following day in the hope that they might arrive sooner, arrived this (Tuesday) morning. The first Ebay order for the BTB16-800BWRG still hasn't arrived. Assuming it does turn up by Saturday, that'll give my stock of 'spares' a 25% boost.

I've repaired the controller board and reassembled the machine sufficiently to run an initial test or two to decide whether the drum motor is in imminent need of urgent attention (with four 'spare triacs' to hand, why not?).

I'm glad I didn't bother wasting any more time and effort since the motor ran perfectly 'sparkless' let alone 'arcless' on the high speed spin cycle. I'm beginning to think the failure was just down to my son's habit of overloading the machine, compounding this 'Sin' by choosing the longest (90 minute!) and most expensive wash program to test that poor defenceless triac to its limit and beyond.

Having successfully tested my handiwork, I finished reassembling the machine with only *one* screw left over! A bit of head scratching led me to partially disassembling the clip on the plastic control panel fascia to locate the placement for this one left over screw.

I must have touched lucky the first time I'd offered the fascia up since this second time round proved to be a lot more fiddly (there's a row of 5 push buttons and a bunch of light pipes which need to be finessed to align them with apertures in the sub panel (light pipes) and the fascia (button guides)). Anyway, I managed to reassemble it with not a single leftover part in sight. :-)

The missus put a normal load through the machine without any problem. However, a few hours later I heard a plaintive cry from SWMBI where I recognised the word "failed". It seems our live at home son had put his usual weekly wash (over)load into the machine using the 90 minute program and it had given up, as best as I could make out, when attempting the final spin cycle. Only after the XYL had redistributed the load did it deign to execute a 'spin dry only' cycle. Not a machine fault so much as "Operator Error" this time.

When I volunteered to tackle our 'youngest' about his cavalier attitude to the matter of 'machine washing' his clothes, SWMBI (aka in this case, SWMBO) vetoed this plan for fear of him 'being upset'. I think I'll have to try a more subtle approach.

One that immediately springs to mind is to get him to print the downloaded manual for the benefit of his mum. The 'gift'[1] from her now estranged son may have been free but it came sans user guide so it's a reasonable request and (who knows?) he might even browse it and learn why it pays big time to not over (or, for that matter, under) load an automatic front loading washing machine. :-)

[1] I took a couple of photos of the labels on the controller unit one of which proclaims a date/time of "4/22/03 - 11:12:52 AM" which seems to be an American date format (but doesn't state which timezone). Clearly. the machine can't possibly be any older than 14 years and 10 1/2 months from its manufacture. In view of the fact that it was almost brand new from Currys when it was gifted to us, we've probably only been using it for the last 14 years at most.

I've said it before but I think it's worth repeating, everything considered, the machine is in a remarkably pristine state. The only hint of its true age requires removal of the detergent tray to reveal a small,

5mm diameter rust spot on the front panel paintwork. If Zanussi are still manufacturing their automatic washing machines to this standard (regardless of "Badge Engineering"), I can't recommend them highly enough.