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My son asked me to have a look at his Hotpoint WDL520 Aquarius washer dryer which “keeps stopping”.
The first thing I checked was the filter and associated pipework and thought I was onto something when I found a couple of one pound coins in the bottom of the ‘ping-pong ball’ type filter.
Full of hope I put the machine onto a wash cycle. That hope was soon dashed.
The machine seems to start normally, turning the drum while filling with water but then after three or four minutes it stops and pumps out. When this happens all the option button leds flash at a fast rate but none of the leds in the vertical row are on except the door lock one.
I have had a look at the WML/WDL/BHWD fault code page on this site which shows five leds and says “The door locked light should be the lowest (first in the row) and the wash light the fifth, top light (fifth in the row)”. As there are six lights on the WDL520 I’m not sure how this applies. If the lock light counts then the fault code would be F16 =”not used” and if it doesn’t count then there are no lights on.
In an attempt to get further clues I tried putting a towel in on a dryer cycle. The same thing happens after about ten minutes, same lights on. The towel was quite hot by then so I would think the basics must be working.
Although I’ve usually managed to fix my own washing machine faults in the past I’m an electronics engineer by trade, so definitely not a washing machine expert. As such any suggestions or tips to point me in the right direction would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Frank
Re: Hotpoint WDL520 "stopping"
The graphic in the fault codes is a little confusing.
You count the lights from the bottom up using only the bottom five lights.
Sadly you have F01, motor traic short circuit. 🙁
You could check the motor brushes and motor wiring connections.
PS. I could point you in the right direction to a tip. 😉
Re: Hotpoint WDL520 "stopping"
Thanks for the prompt reply. I must have read the page mentioned above wrongly as I got the impression that when reading off the binary fault code that the bottom light was the most significant bit rather than the LSB.
Anyway, Perhaps all is not lost. I’ll pull the control board out and see what type the triacs are and remove them and check them out, just so long as they’re not encapsulated in a resin block or something similar!
Thanks for your help.
Re: Hotpoint WDL520 "stopping"
I had a look at the brushes when I was cleaning the filter out. I shouldn’t think they are even a third worn.
Can’t help thinking that a triac would normally work or not work. I suppose it’s possible that it could be breaking down after a few minutes running. I’ll take the pcb out and have a look anyway. Perhaps it could just be contacts. As I remember there are an awful lot of wires going to the board that could give a dodgy connection, and the edge connector fingers on the board aren’t exactly high quality gold plated contacts.
I’ll post back if I have any luck.
Re: Hotpoint WDL520 "stopping"
BigF wrote:I had a look at the brushes when I was cleaning the filter out. I shouldn’t think they are even a third worn.
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The only way to check them properly is to remove them from the motor, a washer dryer of this age should have worn them down by well over a third unless the machine has only been used once a week.Re: Hotpoint WDL520 "stopping"
Checking and changing motor brushes is the one job I have done many times on washing machines. This one isn’t actually much more than 2 years old and gets very light use. My son lives on his own, only does one or two washes a week and rarely uses the dryer function. (He’d rather bring his washing and ironing round for his mum to do for him!)
Re: Hotpoint WDL520 "stopping"
As a follow up to this, I removed the triacs from the control board and checked them out but they seemed fine. Checked whatever else I could practically check on the pcb (transistors, electrolytics and such like), but all seemed ok.
In desperation I sprayed all the edge connectors and plugs and sockets with some contact cleaner and put it all back together. It has since been running for the last few weeks with no problems!
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