Washing machine brushes (which ones)

Tim

Hotpoints are notorious for getting through brushes. I replaced ours about every three years.

The Bosch Classixx is, I believe, one of the made-not-in-Germany range. I think they are probably in the kind of Hotpoint range in terms of build and cost.

Incidentally, the genuine brushes are available from Bosch online for £33.84 plus £4.99 carriage. They are pretty quick getting them to you.

Is it clean? There shouldn't be anything other than minimal deposits on it. Have you looked at it when running? Is there much arcing, that will erode brushes PDQ.

Sounds like you got a substandard part. I'd just get a replacement from anywhere else.

NT

It happens that p.mc formulated :

Brushes last for many years in an otherwise good motor. Since you say the comutator looks and feels smooth, that leaves only three possibilities: bad brushes, wrong model brushes or a bad motor wire connection.

The defect in bad brushes would be soft material. I'm guessing this is not the problem because it seems to me it would not be cheaper to make brushes out of a softer aloy. I've never heard of such a thing, but I suppose it is possible.

The likely culprit is arcing. That could be caused by brushes that are not wide enough to span the gap between the comutator contact areas. That would cause arcing. But that defect would be noticable. I don't think you would fail to notice that the new brushes are half the width of the old ones.

The more likely cause would be a disconnected motor winding. That would cause one or more of the comutator contact areas to be dead. That would cause arcing every time a brush leaves that comutator trace and connects to a hot trace. I think you need a new motor.

McGyver

Reinspection would show burning on the commutator metal surface.

NT

The OP said the commutator was smooth, but didn't say if it was dull or shiny.