John Lewis washing machine not turning – time for new brushes?

[MJNewton]

Our John Lewis washing machine (model JLWM1202, PNC 91451711200, purchase date ~2006) has always given us good service and only required a couple of replacement inlet valves in its 18 year life. However, today it seemed to stop mid-cycle and experimentation suggests that the motor is failing to turn and this is corroborated in the service mode which reveals an E52 ‘No signal from motor techimetric generator’ error.

Wrestling the machine out of its cupboard appears to have got things going again, and the short video below shows the motor spinning along with the sparking whose sound is something I happened to notice for the first time a couple of days ago:

[video=youtube_share;yzcn7c5Nszo]https://youtu.be/yzcn7c5Nszo[/video]

Is the seemingly-intermittent motor operation, and perhaps the sparking too, indicative of failing brushes?

Here’s the motor, and the (hard to photograph) label reads ‘ACC Type 20584.514’. The brushes look visually identical to these I think?

[electrofix]

highly likely its the brushes

you will need a 5.5mm socket to get them off

if you take them off, flick the head of the brush a few time to strectch things a bit. then look at the head of the brush to see if you can see the copper core. if you cant see the core you can put them back and it should see you through a few washes till the replacements get here.
when you do replace them keep the loads down and use lower spin speeds till the new brushes bed in

Dave

[MJNewton]

Massive thanks Dave. I did what you suggested and found that whilst both brushes were heavily worn down (<10mm remaining) the sparking one was a bit 'sticky' and with a bit of wiggling around I got the spring to be able to apply a bit more contact pressure. Putting them back in removed the sparking and got things working again so like you say we should be able to carry on for the time being whilst the replacements arrive (just ordered). Thanks also for the tip about bedding them in.

[video=youtube_share;ffcYNpkv89M]https://youtu.be/ffcYNpkv89M[/video]

[MJNewton]

Finally got round to fitting the new brushes (actually a few weeks back now) and comparing them side-by-side with the originals it was pretty apparent how worn they’d become!

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