Spider Corrosion, And Foul Odors, In Front Load Washers

[potatochips]

It has to be a multitude of issues that brings machines to this point. I dont believe its one solid thing that causes the chain of events.

 

I had a front load GE in my old townhouse that was brand new. I had it five years and always took care of it as the instructions said so. Never grew mold or anything. It may be a symptom of North Americans not understanding that FL machines arent care free like TL.

 

Speaking of that, does this issue occur in Europe? Or is it a North American issue? What brands are more prone to failure?

 

[speedqueen]

Another issue is people's fascination with SS tubs, porcelain coated steel tubs had no direct metal to metal contact for many years before the porcelain enamel began to fail. If the tub were all porcelain coated, there would be no metal to metal contact, just metal to porcelain. Were W&WW Spacemates known to have  spider failures? Did they have aluminum spiders?

 

[gizmo]

It certainly happens here in Australia, but we are a nation of cold water washers. Not me I hasten to add.
Hoover Australia took a UK designed front loader and put it into production here. It was simplified by deleting the dispenser drawer (just put detergent in the drum) and the heater became optional - if the model number ended in 0 it had no heater, if it ended in 5 it had a heater. The heater models were rare. Despite this, they had a good solid spider and problems with them were uncommon. bearing and seal changes were common, though.

Bendixes made in Italy were sold here and they seemed to escape spider troubles, but I don't think you could do a cold wash in them. Pacific washers were a rebadged Gorenje and they had unreliable timers but I never saw one with a failed spider, and they had an "E" button to turn off the heater.

GE sold an Italian made front loader, I don't know who the manufacturer was, but they had a thin, frail looking spider and I saw several of them dead from spider failure. You had to replace the drum and it was too expensive.

My LG washer from before 2000 was only a few years old but had a broken spider when I got it, I replaced the spider and bearings and it had been great for many years since.

I had always considered spider failure to be a mixture of poor design, cold water washing and poor detergents. One detergent sold here, EUCA, makes a big deal about not being harmful to cast aluminium components. I have never considered galvanic action to be a part of the problem, it is an interesting theory.

 

[engineeredsolut]

Think about it

I just encountered this failure on an Amana front loader. Having worked in an aluminum factory for extrusion, die casting, investment and open pour molding many years, I can safely say they would never spend to make this part out of aluminum.

The material in almost certainly zink die cast.

As to the causes, there are many...

Powdered detergent which can get into the voids left behind in a poor design, invites both detergent and chlorine to be deposited in the machine. The poor seal design which permits this means these materials will concentrate there over time. As they do, the purity of the adulterant alkaline will increase well beyond normal, such that a PH of 8 in the wash will easily seek upwards of 11 and higher as it remains wet, absorbs chlorine with the impacted detergent. As the unit sees hot water the water in the impacted sludge is driven off, leaving an ever increasing caustic exposure to the unprotected bare metal.

zinc is far less durable and much more subject to chemical attack than aluminum. However even aluminum alloy required to cast this small of a rib cross section would be nearly as weak as zinc.

It has little to do with user habits as the machine design itself is garbage, well known by the engineers what the problem is, why it is and that it is ultimately all about "planned obsolescence".

40 plus years as an engineer and three degrees in engineering, all I can say is this is a roaring embarrassment to Samsung who mass produced most of these unit variations.

This is INTENTIONAL fail.

If they had made the design out of reinforced formaldehyde adulterated nylon, high density structural foam injected the part would have lasted forever.

I'm remaking mine out of structural steel, nearly same weight, dynamically balanced.

Think about it and quit calling each other disparaging names. We're all fighting the same battle.

Good luck to all.

Mike

 

[me]

Biofilm induced intergranular corrosion

Prior to 2005 Whirlpool spiders were made of 383 aluminium alloy.

In June 2005 they made a design change to the material to 413 aluminium alloy, which has a lower copper content.

The change in material was made to prevent, or significantly reduce the risk of biologically induced intergranular corrosion, which they'd identified in a small number of machines with a very heavy biofilm build up.

They also made changes to the profile of the spider to reduce water pooling.

Found the info in the class action summary I've linked to below, see page 15 onwards:-

https://web.archive.org/web/2014032...09/Whirlpool-Certification-Denied-Reasons.pdf

 

[mark_wpduet]

someone revived this OLD thread so

@ latest reply ..

That's really interesting. I'm not sure what the build date is for my Whirlpool duet but it sounds like that change wasn't made until AFTER mine was built..

I do wonder though. Take someone who has good laundry habits and their machine doesn't smell.. Let's say the spider is slowly crumbling away or rotting away, dissolving... whatever... would that create a bad smell on its own?

 

[gelaundry4ever]

fabric softener

I can say the same thing for fabric softener. It will not ruin your washer when used as directed.

 

[me]

fabric softener

Mould growing in the fabric conditioner residue left in the draw compartment got close to wrecking mine, it partially blocked one of the inlet jets at the back of the draw compartment, diverting the water so that some leaked out under the draw, and across the front plastic facia along the bottom edge of the controller board and also rusted some of the front panel.

I still use fabric conditioner, but I now leave the draw open between washes so it dries out preventing mould growth. My previous machines all had a hot water intake, so did not get so much mould building up in the draw compartment.

 

[me]

Had a quick search for other documents about the biofilm class action, and came across a few later ones.

These mention biofilm deposits leading to crevice corrosion, and also that the use of hypochloride bleach accelerates this corrosion.

As I understand it crevice corrosion can occur where there's a small void like pitting, or a junction between surfaces (eg spider and the drum) and oxygen get excluded, by biofilm in this case, the water becomes increasingly acidic, chlorine ions make this worse and oxidisation of the aluminium uses up all the oxygen, so that the aluminium can no longer form a passivated aluminium oxide coating.

Something similar occurs if you were to use stainless steel screws below the water line in the hull of a wooden boat used in salt water and seal them with stopper.

There was also this about the causes of the increasing occurrence of biofilms and smells.

" The March 1, 2006 Whirlpool Document discusses why biofilm and corrosion
were becoming an issue at that time. The document attributes it to changes in
washing habits (fewer high temperature programs, increased use of liquid
detergent with reduced corrosion inhibitors, short cycle time has priority leading
to full load being washed on express cycle with insufficient rinse, market
requiring big load capacity), wash programs using less water at lower
temperatures leading to poor cleaning of the inside of machine and the fact that
the Washing Machines are basically a European design, not necessarily suited
to US washing habits (low water temperatures, HE detergent not always used
and widespread use of bleach in quite high quantities). The discussion also
identified “lack of specifications and poorly understood design concepts”: "

https://www.clg.org/pdf/4/3/7/1/Amended-Application-to-Institute-Proceedings.pdf

https://www.clg.org/pdf/7/7/9/New-Motion-to-Authorize.pdf

 

[DADoES]

 
Short:  cold water is evil, and liquid detergents are a contributing factor (unless perhaps the formulations have improved).

 

[DADoES]

 
Regards to cold water ... I stayed a week+ with a friend for his son's wedding, with other of his family also visiting.  I did several loads of laundry.  Kenmore (rebadged LG) 796.41262.610.  Dryer is a blue HE3-match 110.82826101 (serial 11/2002).  Anyway, bath towels had some mustiness.  He's using Amazon Basic pods, lavender scent (he said always dose of two).  Normal cycle warm is cool at best.  I ran a towels load on Whites hot (which was a strong warm, LOL) and one extra rinse.  Mustiness gone on that load (no appreciable lavender scent remained).  I don't recall but I may have added a 3rd pod.  His gas water heater is producing upwards of 158°F, confirmed with a digital meat thermometer at the kitchen faucet.  The washer does that wonky LG pulse-fill pattern, rattling the pipes.