zanussi zwg5125 help

[tacowheels]

Hi, im a newbie to this forum, heck a newbie to living alone! I have searched and searched reading as much as I can but to no avail.

Now, I have a zanussi zwg5125 washing machine. Recently I noticed clothes were coming out soaking wet and not very well washed. After sitting watching the machine on a quick rinse and spin I noticed the drum was not spinning, although the motor goes through its cycles as normal.

Upon finding a free hour in my hectic life I set about doing a little troubleshooting. First thing I noticed was the drum could not be spun by hand. This led me to think one of two things; either there was something stuck in the drum or the bearings had seized. I sat for a good hour with my head in the drum searching through all the holes, trying to find anything that could be preventing the drum from spinning. Sadly the only thing I seemed to find was a little claustrophobia!

Next I opened up the back of the washing machine, I was hoping to remove the waste pipe from the bottom of the drum to see if there was anything lurking. However before I got to that I noticed the drive belt (running from the spindle on the motor to the drum pulley) had snapped. The belt had severe abrasions over an inch and a half length which ultimately resulted in a snapped belt.

Now I have read online to move the drum up and down and feel for a knocking which would indicate trashed bearings, I cannot feel a knocking but can move the drum up and down a good inch at the front of the drum.

Now to pass this into the hands of the experts, from your experience does the worn belt and the seized drum indicate the need for bearing replacement or should I just bite the bullet and buy a new machine? Im fairly competent (mechanical fitter) and can get by on a bit of ‘leccy engineering. Also whilst searching for any info on the zwg5125 I have turned up next to nothing. I was wondering if there was maybe a guide that I could have a browse of just to give me a better idea of how best to perform this operation.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I just cannot afford to call out an engineer at the moment.

[Martin]

Re: zanussi zwg5125 help

Typical symptoms of overloading and clothing then getting caught between the drum and the tub. Any missing socks perhaps? The belt snapping is a dead giveaway as to that scenario. If it were dodgy bearings you would have realised it was making a hell of a racket weeks before and even then the belt would simply fall off the drive pulley rather than snap.

I bet there’s a sock jammed in there. Almost impossible to access unfortunately if it has a welded drum. If it is an early version of the model it could have a split drum in which case the whole machine will have to be taken to bits to access…….. Oh dear!

[Author]

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