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I’ve had 2 this week.
First an old lady with tinnitus who says her Servis fridge freezer is driving her mad with it’s noisy operation. I can’t hear anything so I open the fridge door to get serial number and remark to her daughter that the compressor should switch on soon and I’ll be able to hear it. After a minute or two I decide to pull it out and wait for it to kick in. Looking down at the back I realise it IS on and has been all along – what a nice quiet compressor. Customer comes in kitchen and reitterates how it’s driving her mad and she can hear it in the next room OVER the telly. I wait for silence and enquire, “is it making the noise now?” Customer confirms it is. All I can do is advise it’s working OK and beat a hasty retreat.
Then today I had a Zanussi washer dryer with reported fault “Leaking only on tumble dry” When I arrive I’m updated that it is actually only leaking when it’s finished! It never leaks a drop while washing, but when it’s finished it starts leaking.
I spent an entire hour trying to find a leak and couldn’t see a drop. I even waited 10 mins after it had finished – despite thinking the fault is impossible. The daft thing is it was quite wet underneath when I arrived.
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
I once spent ages trying to find a dry joint or poor connection on a Hotpoint washer drier. On this machine there was no motor action unless you wiggled the module, that clipped onto the timer. I even renewed all the wires to the motor but nothing helped. The machine was one sold secondhand by a shop that subbed repairs to me. When in the shop next time I noticed they had an identical washer drier in their stock of machines for reconditioning. I proposed that I repair this so it could be offered as a replacement to the other washer drier customer. When I looked at this second machine I found the symptoms were identical to the first and a couple of other repairers had already washed their hands of it!
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
andy_art_trigg wrote:
I spent an entire hour trying to find a leak and couldn’t see a drop. I even waited 10 mins after it had finished – despite thinking the fault is impossible. The daft thing is it was quite wet underneath when I arrived.
Have they got a dog, I had a FNF ( fault not found ) on a Hotpoint 1830 many years ago, finally traced to the Jack Russell terrier peeing on one corner of the washer.Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
Went to fit dryer fan motor on integrated ariston washer dryer. Cust rings back 2 weeks later to say water coming from under plinth. Pull plinth off and the floor is swimming in mucky water. Spend ages checking filter/hoses etc but cant trace leak. Her daughter goes upstairs. Next minute see water pouring onto floor.
Turns out kitchen fitter has done something with sink in between my visits and pulled sink waste out of soil stack.
S****y job that one!Candy – Charme range.
Intermittant leaking, no evidence of any leak inside the machine at all, not a drip or a soap run to be seen.
Any ideas what the fault turned out to be and this was almost epidemic?
Alex, don’t tell them. 😉
K.
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
I dont know what a charme range model is but the only epidemic Candy leaks I recal from our time as an agent would be the wd262 washer drier getting airlocked and filling itself up while drying or turbo 21 range all being delivered with cracked filter housings due to them being fitted so low that the sack barrow used to deliver the machine breaked it even when in its box.
Oh no, the dreaded WD262, that’ll get Alex started again! 😆
Those Turbo machines were absolutely brilliant, bought me an Alfa Romeo they did. 😉
K.
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
A local auction house buys pallet loads of catalogue returns. On one there was a nearly new Hotpoint, one of the last WM models. I thought the bearings had failed but when I got the machine apart the front bearing was missing completely! It must have left the factory like that. The machine was still under warranty and despite being in my workshop in bits, Hotpoint sent someone to rebuild it with a new outer drum.
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
I replaced a perished Door Seal on Tricity Bendix washing machine, the lady phoned a few weeks later to complain…..” that ever since you fitted that seal the machine leaks!” I went back and try as I might I couldn’t get this machine to show any sign of a leak. Spent ages running it through with a washload, no leak whatsoever. Customer apologised for calling me out and I left somewhat bemused.
A few days later she rings again….”please can you come back it’s leaking right now!”When I got there I found the source of the leak was not the machine at all but coming from the airing cupboard on the other side of the room, some 12 feet away!! On ‘washdays’ she does a bit of handwashing and puts dripping wet clothing on a wire clothes horse in the airing cupboard. The kitchen floor is ceramic tiled and the dripping water runs along the channel between the tiles and manifests itself in a puddle at the front of the bl**dy washing machine!!!!
Martin
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
A couple of years back I got called to a Zanussi de6544, not starting – cycle light flashes slowly like its about to start but no go.
By the time I got to this one of my colleages had fitted pcb, door lock, heater, pump & side tank & still no joy. I went in armed with a wiring diagram must have spent 2 hours checking everything. Finally in sheer desparation and by this time thouroughly p****d off I yanked all the wires of the rinse aid dispenser, shut the door – click & away it went.
Changed the dispenser, worked fine, checked the old one & couldnt find a thing wrong then a few weeks later I got called to another 6544 with the same problem. This time I went straight to the r/a/d & changed it – sorted.
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
Once went to an old purple Hotpoint 1850, customer complained that the machine kept switching itself off. ❗ Now I don’t know how many of you remember the very old English Electric Liberator ( better built than anything Tuetonic), one timer version used on that machine did in fact have a bi-metal overload cut out inside the timer that would ‘pull’ the control knob in and switch the machine off, but an 1850 doing this ???
It was a fairly small built on kitchen and the washing machine was situated at one end where the back door opened into the kitchen, yes you’ve guessed it , when it was windy the back door was blowing in and ‘switching the machine off’ 🙂
Speaking of the very earliest English Eletric Liberator, it didn’t liberate the user that much, it only ran in one direction, you then had to throw a lever on the front which pulled the drum pulley in to achieve ( a very slow ) spin, always assuming you had remembered to throw the other lever that pulled the pump pulley against a rubber wheel on the motor. This operation was replaced by two huge solenoids on later models. Ah, those were the days. 😉
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
Towards the end of my time at Hotpoint ( I took voluntary redundancy in the late 70’s) it was my job to sort out ( if possible ) the problem machines, Often it was a case of looking at a problem from a different angle, sometimes it was just good luck.
A colleague who was a decent engineer had finally given up on a 1600 and the Area Manager asked me to have a look. Anyone old enough to remember the 1600/1830 will know that the original control module was a small one that went into a 14 way connector. This was superceded by a larger module that had 18 connections. This was supplied with a new 18 way block complete with leads and enough butt connectors to do the conversion. This engineer had fitted one of these conversions to replace a burnt out module, but could not get the motor to run correctly afterwards, no matter what he tried.I checked all the obvious things, brushes, continuity on all circuits, checked every one of his18 butt connections and found no faults. The new 18 way module block had one thing that the earlier one did not, a small thin black wire that linked between two of the block connections, I was on the verge of throwing in the towel when I decided to check this link. Imagine my relief when I found that it was OC. The insulation on the tiny loop wire had not been trimmed back when it was manufactured and it was crimped over the plastic. 8)
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
i once seen a door seal with a split in it that had been sewn with wool
that one ill never forget i can still picture that door seal now
amazing what some people will doRe: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
We once had an A3236 Hoover in the workshop at Wigfalls and the rubber drain hose was down to earth. None of us could believe it as the engineer who discovered it gathered us round. Sure enough, when he meggered the live pin and touched the outer rubber drain hose the needle shot over. It must have been rotting and badly cracked inside and water must have been tracking to the surface.
Re: What’s the most illogical fault you’ve had to find?
Remember the old early Hotpoint motors with the 6 tags, double banked. The machine fault would be `no motor action`. Easy peasy, module, or brushes. You check the brushes…ok, by pass the module to see if the motor works, it does`nt so the motor plug is removed and you check its circuits…all ok. Hmmm.
In those days it was easy to carry a couple of motors and modules, so you try both…no motor action still. This is were you mentally settle in for a longer job. Timer checked for burnt contacts…ok, harness checked for scuffed and blown leads…ok. Go through it all again, still no motor action.
One last check, lets take a closer look at the motor harness plug. Check if pins are secure in slots, pull the leads to do this and `hey presto`, one of the leads pulls away from the back of the tag. The conductor had broken close to the tag but the insulation had remained intact 👿 .
After that first one I always checked future repairs on these machines and found a number of others that had not yet shown the symptom. Its funny how elated you feel when you get a result on this kind of repair, or is it just me 😀 .
Laurence
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