Ariston AL1256T

I recently moved in to a place and inherited the use of this machine. I may need to give Ariston a ring for the user manual (saw the number in another thread already) but my experience with it so far makes me think it has a fault that no manual will help me with.

Having looked through many other threads here, I haven’t seen the problem I’m having so here’s the grief it’s giving me:

For the main washes in the cycle (2-4 on control dial), it will happily fill with water and detergent, and slosh around. If left in this state, the dial will advance appropriately for the requisite time (60-90 mins) but then gets stuck halfway through the ‘4’ part of the program. I can manually advance it and get it to drain water, and spin, but nothing I do seems to let it fill with water to rinse with. 5 is ‘extra rinsing’ but again, no water for rinsing will be injected.

So I’m either left with soapy clothing or I repeat with a brief wash cycle and no detergent afterward to rinse them.

Including program 1 on the dial (pre-wash) is a no-go, if you start it there, it will just sit there forever and not advance the dial at all or fill with water (can leave it like that for 20-30 mins.. it’s on, it’s humming ready to go, but doesn’t do anything).

So unless it’s filling with water during the main wash, there seems to be no other way of getting any inside.

Wasn’t 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} sure if the special wash buttons (rinse hold, quick wash, super care, etc.) were on or off when depressed or released, so tried it with two washes now with the whole bank in or out for the entire time, and can’t perceive any noticable difference either way. So although I don’t know the answer to the on/off state, seems moot.

The times when I think it should be putting water in the machine for rinsing and isn’t, it seems to be making a chugging or retching sound (but not doing anything, drum may not even be turning at this time).

Any ideas or info I might be able to provide? I would at least like to feel confident it’s a machine fault and not just me before I go further. DIY capability with washing machines / household electric appliances is low/minimal.

Thanks.