Miele W1918 Bearings

[3beltwesty]

The SEAL is most important

Most washers and auto water pumps have their water seals degrade first.

Then the seal leaks and water corrodes the 52100 ball bearing steel.

Then the bearing degrades way quicker since there is corrosion on the bearing races.

Having the new ball bearings installed with little injury is a good thing. If Goober the installer did use some tapping and force; this may or may not be an issue; because the force has to be above the some ratio of the static load rating. Plus the seal failure totally swamps the failure mode due to corrosion.

Once a water seal leaks; the L10 life in revolutions can be only 1/10,000 to 1/10th of the textbook L10 ball bearing life, the corrosion accelerates the fatigue failure by many many orders of magnitude. One has measured lives all over the map.

Thus besides the bearings being installed properly; the bigger thing to install properly is the water seal. Many are designed to "bare" against a shaft of a certain microinch of surface finish. If too rough it fails early; if to mirror like it can not seal too. If cut or nicked or if cocked it might no seal too.

A leaky seal is why most all washer and water pump bearings fail. The bearings never approach the design life.

Having the new ball bearings installed properly is like eating well to live long. A water seal leak is more like taking up skydiving, playing chicken with trains, eating unknown plants, and swimming with sharks, it can overide the eating well to live long.

In a commercial machine where uptime is most important, a stainless of ceramic ball bearing is used. The seal can leak and the bearing does not corrode as fast, one has more time to factor in repairs.

 

[3beltwesty]

weep hole

Some washers and water pumps have a weep hole. Thus if the seal leaks, a small tiny flow can at first not ruin the closest ball bearing.

In some old washer designs the area between the seal and first bearing has a weep hole. This in a rebuild can be clogged or not seen, or full of grease or crud.

When the bearings and seal are out, see if there is a weep hole and make sure it is not clogged.

 

[limey]

Bearing and Seal Failure

To 3beltwesty,
I agree with almost everything you say.
There are a few references 'on the web' where people state that their front load washers have suffered bearing failures with no apparent failure of the seal. Whilst I did not/do not own the machine where I have personal experience of this, it belonged to a relative. That is close enough for me to disagree with your statement that bearings never approach the design life.
SKF put out and interesting booklet on bearing failures and their causes. It can be viewed at: -

http://www.kamandirect.com/resources/2010/downloads/skf_bearing_failureandcauses.pdf

 

[3beltwesty]

Many FL washing machine bearings are larger than an early 19

Here the FL machine bought in in 1976 became noisy about 1997 with twenty one years of usage. It ran until the front bearings cage broke in the summer of 2005. I rebuilt the machine in 2006. Its front 6205 bearing's cage broke. The balls are are not even round in that bearing. The water seal failed. The old rear 6205 bearing with 29 years of usage technically is worn out since it has more than 10 percent of its races with pits, but still works OK. These are a 25mm bore bearing.

Today some FL washers use 30 and 35mm bore ball bearings. When today somebodys FL washer that is 3 years old has a bearing go bad, it has to be seal. The bearing is larger in load capacity than of a 1965 Mustangs rear axle bearing.

There is a reason fisherman use bearing buddies; to lube the bearings. In trailers if one has them go under water to load a boat, the bearings often get wet and corrode like made. The same bearing if it never sees water can last a livetime. A dunked bearing can have one on the side of the road with a hot or ruined bearing and ruin ones fishing trip.

Here I have a 3 foot stack of bearing info catalogs, the classical Harris engineering textbook on load calculations and even the ultra ultra rare New Departure Hyatt hand written text book that was written in WW2 that is worth a bundle. I use to work in ball bearing spindle design with NMB, SKF, NDH, Kyocera, Fag, Koyo, etc on disc drives. I have a spectrum analyzer to measure the noise spectrum of bearings; and a whole collection of bearings. One gets different frequencies with inner. outer, ball and cage defects. I once turned down a job offer to work for NSK in Ann Arbor about 20 years ago. In Ceramic ball bearings. Kyocera had them 20 years ago in Japan

Most ball bearings are 52100 steel that corrodes with ease. The reason I mention the seal being the weak link is that ball bearing is only protected by that water seal.

The washer here that had one bearing fail totally after 29 years is bot even a sealed bearing; it is a shielded one.

If one looks at most modern non Miele FL washers; the spider is a light aluminum. It is a shot casting with gobs of surface area; ideal to corrode quickly. The web is full of early failures with these spiders corrodeing. That broken corroded shush/slurly of aluminum crud cannot be good for the water seals lip.

If one runs a few numbers for load, the failures of FL washers today is *WAY* shorter than a bearing prediction; ie in another universe. The ball bearings today in many FL washers is equal or larger than many of the ball bearings once used in a small car's rear axle back in the 1960's. The "small type" factory real axle ball bearings in a Ford Falcon or early Mustang are smaller than those larger ball bearings in a modern FL washer.

Today a car like the Camaro, a postal delivery truck have roller bearings on the rear axles.

It is good to disagree.

Besides a bad install; Here I have seen ball bearing failures due to arcing, missalignment, too high a preload, wrong clearance too. Even one hands can ruin the bearing surfaces. Mixing two types of grease types can be a big no no too.

Many liquids that enter a bearing can cause corrosion. A washing machine is a tuff environment.

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[limey]

Bearings

To 3beltwesty
Thank you for a very informative post.
I believe you will find, should you ever be able to obtain the relevant details, that the out of balance loads in FL washers are greater than the much reduced out of balance load in vehicle wheels, added to which the fulcrum for a FL washer is much further from theffective point of the load than for a single tire automobile wheel. Just think of the very small balance weights added to vehicle wheels to 'balance' them and then think if the weight of a soaking wet woolen sock much further from the fulcrum than the lead balance weight. In my view a very large difference.
You are correct, I believe, the aluminum 'crud' from the corrosion process contains alumium oxide, the same very hard, abrasive material that is the 'grit' in sandpaper.
Around 20+ years ago I witnessed a demonstration of a machine which measured, and recorded, the noise level from bearings. The purpose was to take readings at regular intervals to determine at what point the 'noise level' reached a level at which time bearing renewal was required. As you say this allowed for better planned maintainence, rather than just renewal after so many running hours.
I thought it was a good idea, however it did not 'catch on'. Likely the bean counters did not like paying for the equipment in the first place and then paying someone to take the readings and monitor the results.
A good technician with a stethascope can achieve the same thing but the bearing housing has to be accessible to the stethascope whilst running, and the bearings have to be checked regularly by the same technician, although even a poor technician should be able to determine when the bearings are getting 'square'.

 

[GrahamW]

Spider removal

Does anyone have any hints on removing the cast spider on a Miele? Given the rust path from the bearing on the back of the outer tub (see photo), I'd say the seal leaked and the bearing failed. I've finally pulled the drum and removed the pulley but the outer bearing (#9 in diag) above doesn't have anything to grab and I'm not sure I can pull the spider without removing the outer bearing and the snap-ring (#8 in diag).

I have a 2 or 3 jaw gear puller and a torch to heat the cast spider if needed...

 

[GrahamW]

2nd thought

My previous msg didn't make any sense... In retrospect, I think a gear puller on the cast spider with a little heat should get the spider+bearings free of the shaft.

 

[bewitched]

W 918 = W1918

Hi! I've changed bearings on my W918 Miele. I think W 918 is the same as your W1918.
Changing bearings is a hard work because of the weight of the tub assembly but it's not complicated. You need to remove the motor and the black iron cast from the tub. All four arms have two bolts each you have to remove. Then you'll need an extractor to separate the drum shaft from the bearings that are located inside the black iron cast. Once you have separated the two pieces you'll have to remove the two bearings fom the black iron cast and insert the two new ones. This is the worst and more difficult task you have to perform. You usually will notice that is just one bearing that failed, usually the one nearest to the tub. This generally fails because the round black seal is broken. No way the spider attached to the drum is corroded or damaged! Clean very well the axle from rust residues and also clean well the part where the black seal goes . I also got a lubricant grease along with the spare kit. I used it to make easier reinsert the drum shaft in the bearing assembly. Remember the two bearings are not the same.
I got all kit for around 100 euro. You can easily purchase it on ebay german.

 

[3beltwesty]

Penetrating stuff to try to make the bearings easier to remo

Here in the usa Items that are stuck together are helped with:

PB Nutblaster or

Kroil.

Google these two products.

Post Katrina I freed up many many "basket case" items and mechanisms that in some cases broke the pullers!

Kroil is better than PB Nutblaster but harder to find in some places.

Both are worlds better than liquid wrench or WD40.

 

[Pingmeep]

Homemade penetrating oil

Kroil is easily twice as good as PB Nutblaster and worth it. If all else fails and you are eying the awful WD40 you could try 1:1 mix of automatic transmission fluid and acetone. It worked really well for me on a 1980 Miele with seized bearings and rusted bolts that had sat exposed to the elements for three or four winters.

 

[GrahamW]

A good soak

Some progress... I only had 30 minutes tonight but after a long soak in some penetrating oil, I managed to pull the cast spider with a 2-jaw gear puller before my daughter woke again. An obvious drum seal failure leading to water entering both the inner and outer bearings. I've not pulled either bearing yet.

Here's a photo of the inner bearing (#7 in above diagram):

 

[vacfanatic]

Photos of Spider Please!

GrahamW,

When you get this torn apart further, can you please take some photos of the Miele Spider on the drum? I'm curious to see if it is much different than just a couple of photos I have found online of other Miele Spiders.

I know it would be appreciated by about 75% of this group if you could take a few photos of it!

Thank you,
Andrew

 

[GrahamW]

One bearing out

Andrew, can you be more specific about what photo you would like? I have taken quite a few shots as I progress. Eg: Here's the spider with the outer bearing (#9 in diagram above):

It was relatively easy to pull.

 

[GrahamW]

The inner bearing...

The inner bearing, however, is proving more difficult. And, yes, that is a piece of the outer race...

 

[GrahamW]

Here's what is left

No amount of Kroil seemed to help with this one. Here's a photo of the inner race... i.e. what is left of the inner drum bearing (#7 in the diagram above). I'll need to wait until tomorrow before I either use a torch to heat it before trying to get my puller on it. Worst case, I'll reach for the die cutter and see if I can't weaken it without hitting the shaft...

 

[Pingmeep]

After looking for similar problems with the W1918 I came across this thread on gardenweb. Sounds similar to your problem.

Miele W1918 gets W770 heart transplant

3 years ago I picked up a used Miele Novotronic W1918A + T1515 set.... been pretty happy with it, but over the past year the washer had developed a worsening wobble on high-rpm spin, which eventually turned into a loud knocking noise, and clothes came out too wet. The inner drum also made a "c...

ths.gardenweb.com

 

[GrahamW]

Indeed

Indeed, a similar problem. However, I'm not sure I agree with the statement that:

"I had a tech out to look at the machine. He said there was a plate in back of the inner drum that had broken or cracked. Apparently, with the advent of the 19xx series, this part was cast from cheap "pot metal", making it both susceptible to failure and impossible to fix."

I've seen nothing resembling "pot metal" in my W1918 or my W1903. Other than some dried water+bearing grease residue, the cast spider appears to be in perfect shape. In my case, it is most certainly the seal that has failed which lead to the inner bearing failing as shown in the photos above. In my opinion, the time to fix the bearing was way before, "the knocking became a deafening banging and white smoke appeared in the drum during spin."

As far as this being a 10 hr repair, that is probably a bit conservative but not too far off. It has taken me:
Disassembly - 1hr
Hoisting the drum - 1hr (including the time it took me to find and setup my come-along)
Remove the cast spider - 1hr (including 1 failed attempt but not including 24hrs of soaking with Kroil)
Removing the bearings from spider/shaft - 1hr (note that the inner race is not off yet)

 

[3beltwesty]

A cutter/ball/saw blade on a dremel tool or die grinder can be used to grind away the inner race. An added thing is that vibration of using the tool helps remove the inner race too. Often on bearings I have had the inner race loosen up and be free before one has really cut through the race. One can too just use the die/tool to get a better surface on the race to pull too.

I would try cleaning off that rusty crud and trying Kroil again. Then try a slight heating of just the inner race with a small torch too.

 

[vacfanatic]

Spiders

Here are a couple of photos of the spider that is actualy attached to the drum itself. There is also the cast X piece that you already took off from the back of the drum. I'm curious to see what your inner tub's spider is made of.

 

[vacfanatic]