I just found another Whirlpool belt drive washer with a bad gearcase

[whirlpool862]

I found a Whirlpool washer model WTW4816FW1 at my sister’s house, I went over the other day and i found that the washer was very loud on the spin cycle.

My brother-in-law said “it’s supposed to sound like that” and that it “spins really fast”, but it’s definitely not.

There is a link to a video of the sound of the washer when spinning, couldn’t include an image on the video because she didn’t want me to do that. My own VMW (WTW4900BW0) has a loud bearing as well as my brother’s Whirlpool WTW4800XQ4.

The older Whirlpool VMW washing machines were quite reliable, but the transmission bearings often wore out with time.

I also know someone who has bad bearings on a Maytag Bravos XL VMAX washing machine.

Some people call this noise the airplane noise or jet engine sound.

 

[combo52]

VMW washer, reliability

The first 3 to 5 years of these machines had a lot of problems, including with the main bearings, quality improved a lot. We seldom see main bearing failures on these machines anymore mode shifter, and a lot of other things were improved. There has been a recent problem on the basic models with bad boards, but whirlpool is covering all those Otherwise they’re quite decent inexpensive washers.

Of course our official recommendation is not to buy any top loader none of them perform as well as a decent front loader in any respect.

John L

 

[whirlpool862]

This machine was a 2017 model year according to its serial number