Kenmore 90 Series Washer Questions

[pumper]

My $25 yardsale kenmore works good but I have two questions:

1. Occasionally the tub will start to spin as soon as it begins draining. It will shut off after a minute or two then start to spin again. Is this a lid switch issue or something more sinister, and will it hurt it to leave it as is?

2. The corkscrew rumbles and grumbles as it's turning. What needs to be replaced?

 

[DADoES]

1. This is somewhat common with the direct-drive neutral-drain tranny design. It's nothing particularly serious, and not related to the lid switch. During agitation, a mechanism inside the transmission presets so that the next time the motor reverses direction, the tranny will go into neutral-drain mode. When the motor pauses and starts again *still* in reverse direction, the mechanism shifts again into spin mode. What happening on your machine is the mechanism isn't properly presetting for neutral drain, so when the motor reverses it immediately starts spinning instead. Sometimes a longer agitation period before drain will take care of it, sometimes not. Very cold weather can also have the effect, causing the tranny oil to thicken.

2. The agitator augers sometimes are noisy. A repair kit is available and easy to install, but it may not be needed unless the cams are not working at all.

 

[bobbins]

When the direct drives first came out, Whirlpool done many tests without the neutral drain. In-fact (I think) the protype was without the neutral drain. Gosh this was the late 80's...my memory going..yikes. At that time they said there would not be any harm done to the motor with a full load of water (so they said...)

 

[appnut]

Whirlpool's design 2000 machines and corresponding initial Kenmores (Model 70 series) came out5 in like 1983 or 1984 at the latest.