1980s Whirlpool Imperial Seventy - Oil on floor

Last year I initially thought the machine was too rusty but when I really examined it the rust condition wasn't too bad. A year ago I fixed the holes in the basket near the pump inlet and center post with rust converter and epoxy putty, and sprayed a thick coating of Flexseal over the inside bottom surface of the drum making sure to coat the center post too. I also added a hollow rubber cup to the area above the uppermost seal in the spin tube and would pack the inside of this cup with tacky grease every so often to keep water from leaking down the shaft. This seemed to help for a while, but I was honestly slacking on checking this every week and the tray I put underneath the machine started to collect more and more water mixed with tacky grease that pushed thru during hot loads. In addition to that, the knock I was hearing from the gearcase during agitation seemed to be getting louder and louder so it was time to pull the machine apart and see if I could fix it.

My laundry room is upstairs and my workshop is in the basement (and the washer is heavy!) so to lighten the load I removed the top of the cabinet, the impeller, and the basket and moved the machine downstairs with a hand truck. To remove the gearcase I packed the area between the drum and cabinet with rolled-up jeans to keep it from flopping around and turned the entire machine upside-down to make it easier to work on. I pulled the gearcase and basket drive out as an assembly. The new spin tube came with bearing and seals already installed, but I wasn't able to easily find a new agitator shaft. Because of this my plan was to measure everything and re-use the original agitator shaft, but position the spin tube seals so they would not ride over any damaged surfaces. The locations of the seals in the new spin tube actually looked pretty good out of the box, but I drove the topmost seal a little bit lower and added a second one (91939) so both seal lips would ride on smooth sections of the old agitator shaft. I packed the area between these two seals with grease.

The new bearing kit came with instructions, very helpful! I didn't have access to the special Robinair bearing remover/installer tool so cobbled something together using a 1/2-inch threaded rod and stuff in my stash. This is where it pays to be a packrat. I found some metal tubing that was perfect for installing new seals, and was able to modify some heavy steel washers so they could be snuck into the center tube for removal of the bottom bearing. In addition to using the threaded rod to remove and install the new bearings I used it to install the new centerpost seals. This worked much better than trying to tap them in with a mallet.

The inside of the gearcase was a mess. The top 2/3 was filled with clear water, and the bottom 1/3 with brown sludgy grease. I was able to mostly clean this with rags and q-tips, followed by a light wash with brakeclean. Sorry I didn't get any photos of this, my hands were way too dirty to grab the cellphone. All of the gears and other moving parts looked great but the agitator spring was rusted out and collapsed, which I believe is the source of the knock I was hearing. That collapsed spring was barely exerting any force which I guess could lead to the big pin at the bottom of the agitator shaft flopping around in those slots that are machined in the bottom of the gear during the agitation cycle. I disassembled the basket drive and swapped out the old spin tube for the new one. Used some clamps to compress the assembly when re-installing the setscrew. Believe it or not the old belt looked decent so I reused it! A new one would put me over that $100 threshold lol.

It took all of my strength to move the cabinet back upstairs, and this is without any of the big parts installed in it. During re-assembly I clamped a wooden box to the side of the cabinet so I could tip the machine to a 45-degree angle and slowly introduce the rebuilt gearcase assembly as a unit and oil the upper and lower bearings when the shafts were in the optimal positions to do this.

The only hiccup I ran into was when I first fired the machine back up. During the first run it sounded like the motor was working harder, and there were even tiny bits of rubber flaking off the old belt. Not a good sign! When it was time to go into the spin cycle the machine completely locked up and threw the belt off the motor pulley, uh oh! I unplugged the power and noticed that the cam bar for spin would barely move.....it was totally locked up and I had to really apply a lot of force to the main drive pulley to manually crank the gears and move the cam bar back to the non-spin position. I was scratching my head trying to figure out what was going on and ultimately had to add two additional shims (i.e. thin hexnuts) to the pin under the brake yoke so the gap between the basket drive pulley and plate were correct (1/16 inch gap during agitation). Without this mod it seemed like the basket drive was dragging on both ends, like it was trying to spin at the same time the brake was applied. I guess the drilled hole in the new spin tube is off by a little bit? Like 1/16 inch too low??? Whatever the situation with those two extra shims the main pulley moves much easier, the cam bar action is smooth, and the machine even correctly brakes when you open the lid during the spin cycle.

Andy - great to see this thread resurrected and happy for you that you decided to rebuild after all and your machine is up and running again. These were built to be repaired and although it takes a bit of time, if you can find all the parts you need, centerpost and outer tub are salvageable and you are mechanically inclined, you can certainly get good results like you did. Super impressed on the ingenuity to create an installer tool and thank you for taking the time to document your rebuild with great descriptions and photos. I'm certain this will help someone else down the road.

Great job and once again, congrats on a successful project!

114jwh said:

Andy - great to see this thread resurrected and happy for you that you decided to rebuild after all and your machine is up and running again. These were built to be repaired and although it takes a bit of time, if you can find all the parts you need, centerpost and outer tub are salvageable and you are mechanically inclined, you can certainly get good results like you did. Super impressed on the ingenuity to create an installer tool and thank you for taking the time to document your rebuild with great descriptions and photos. I'm certain this will help someone else down the road.

Great job and once again, congrats on a successful project!

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Thanks! Your post in this thread with the part numbers (post #21) was extremely helpful.

A little hiccup on the job though. When I swapped the spin tube in the basket drive assembly the two thrust washers on either side of the pulley were extremely thin (PN 353320) and one of them cracked but I re-used them anyway. On load #10 half of the cracked one spat on the floor during agitation and now the machine is making a "loose pulley sound" during everything but spin. I have four of the thrust washers on order now (two for the job plus two spares) and I have a new belt too so will install the new thrust washers when I change the belt later this week.

Are the extra hex-nut shims that I had to install out of the ordinary? When the machine is agitating it looks like there is a 1/16 inch gap between the smooth surface on the top of the spin pulley and those three round friction pads that engage during spin.

Hi Andy, you did a fantastic job rebuilding this machine, reach out anytime you wanna do something like this I have so many parts for these machines that will never be used. There’s no reason to pay $100 for a belt, etc.

I still have about a dozen belt drive whirlpools that will get rebuilt for the museum, several have already been rebuilt.

Over my career I probably rebuilt several hundred of these machines learned all the tricks, a rebuilt, one can last almost as long as a new one and some cases after the rebuilt things are better than they were from the factory.

These machines were thrown together very quickly, and they lasted a decent amount of time, but the manufacturer never intended them to last 40 or50 years.

John L

combo52 said:

Hi Andy, you did a fantastic job rebuilding this machine, reach out anytime you wanna do something like this I have so many parts for these machines that will never be used. There’s no reason to pay $100 for a belt, etc.

I still have about a dozen belt drive whirlpools that will get rebuilt for the museum, several have already been rebuilt.

Over my career I probably rebuilt several hundred of these machines learned all the tricks, a rebuilt, one can last almost as long as a new one and some cases after the rebuilt things are better than they were from the factory.

These machines were thrown together very quickly, and they lasted a decent amount of time, but the manufacturer never intended them to last 40 or50 years.

John L

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Thanks John! $100 was my total budget for everything and I was trying to keep it under that. $100 for just the belt would be insane. I picked up the belt for around $20 with shipping and that is for a Whirlpool part...

Yeah it is crazy how long this machine has lasted. I expect to get many more years out of it.