Hi Nathan
I will look at my small pile of spares but I don't think I have a pulsator clutch. Haved you had it apart yet? (to see how it works.)If you need help I can pull mine apart to refresh my memory, but they work the same as the spin clutches on most Japanese top loaders like Hitachi and Panasonic, as well as the similar Hoovers (eg Premier) and Simpsons (eg Genesis or Riviera). It consists of a cylinder attached to the spin pulley at the back of the drum, and a similar cylinder attached to the pulsator shaft. The two cylinders are directly against each other and in line, the clutch is a steel spring wrapped around both. The end of the spring sticks out and fits into a groove in the white plastic cover around the spring. The cover has a triangular protrusion which snags on the actuator arm when it is engaged by the solenoid. When the clutch engages, the spring is released to wrap tightly around both cylinders and effectively join them together. You see the plastic cover whirring around with the shaft and spring inside.
When the clutch releases, actuator arm pulls in closer, the triangular "lump" on the cover catches on it and the cover can't rotate any more. The spring is attached to the plastic cover so the end of the spring is now held stationary. The pulley and its cylinder are still rotating inside the spring, but the rotation tends to "unwind" the spring so it no longer grips the pulsator shaft's cylinder, and it stops driving.
So when the solenoid snaps in, the clutch should release.
If you have no pulsator drive, and the clutch assembly is still in place, the most likely explanations are (1) that the spring is damaged and no longer grips. The two cylinders wear and the pulsator rear face wears away, so the two cylinders can move apart a tiny bit and the spring wedges in between the two and gets all chewed up. I have seen a couple like this. The spring can snap at this point too. (2) the pulsator may have been deliberately disconnected as they are pretty useless, the water level just barely covers the pulsator so it tends to do nothing much except rub fast on fabric causing bad linting of towels. Like any front loader there is a lot more clothes than water in a Keymatic, unlike a Hoovermatic twinnie where the clothes are freely circulating in a lot of water and the pulsator is well down in the tub. The Keymatic pulsator in my opinion does nothing useful and is quite unreliable, so many are deliberately disconnected. I learnt this from an old Hoover mechanic when I still had a few of them, and I certainly found that the machine washed better on "delicates" (8 min wash, tumble only) than "cottons" or "whites heavy soil" ( 4 min wash tumble and pulsate). So the clutch spring may not even be there.
How did you fix the sump hose problem?
I have recently found that the sump hose from a UK Hotpoint FL, also sold here as a GE FL, has a concertina section and a rubber tee with a blank end to form a "catch pot" to intercept coins,could probably be used as a replacement for the first section of a Keymatic hose. (the bit that fails.) I will take a photo of the two together and post them so you get the idea. It would be installed backwards and sideways to its original installation in the Hotpoint.
Chris.
