Whirlpool Direct Drive discontinuing more parts

[qsd-dan]

I thought Whirlpool quit making the parts all together when they ceased production of their direct drive top loaders.

By law, manufactures are supposed to provide parts up to 10 years. Of course, not all of them follow that rule and it's not firmly enforced unless one has deep pockets for lawsuits. This is one of the reasons why Maytag parts were still widely available through 2016 for orbital machines....which a large sum of those transposed to the much older machines sans the transmission in the washers. However, Whirlpool did use the technique to discourage buying those parts/repairing machines by massively increasing prices on parts, some of them right off the bat after acquiring Maytag in 2006. I was chatting it up an old Maytag repairmen back in 2008 (he was in his 60's and starting working on Maytags back in 1962) and he said Whirlpool jacked the price of the rubber feet from $.75 a piece to $4.00 overnight soon after buying Maytag.

 

[johnb300m]

Apparently many don’t know how companies work.
If they weren’t coerced to do so, they’d stop offering parts soon after the models cease production.
We should be so lucky many of the appliance companies still offer parts so long after sales end. It’s certainly not in their capitalist, or employees’, or suppliers’ interests.
Because LG and Samsung sure don’t! And forget getting any parts out of any Chinese brand.
There will still be some parts floating around in the world probably another decade too, with how prolific the DD platform was. There’s all sorts of stuff in warehouses and little appliance shops.

 

[panasonicvac]

Ah ok, thanks! We always learn something new everyday

 

[combo52]

Major appliance parts availability

Whirlpool advertised since the 1950s that they would keep functional parts for a minimum of 15 years after a product was manufactured and non-functional parts a minimum of 10 years

They pretty much stuck to this, for instance, the combination washer dryer was taken out of production in the fall of 71 sure enough in 1986 you couldn’t get any more functional parts for the machine whatsoever There just weren’t enough sales and they drop them. I sure wish I had stocked up on some of the key parts for this machine before they went NLA.

Manufactures, often keep parts available for many many years. If they can make money on them whirlpool will continue to keep a lot of Maytag parts as long as they can still make money on them.

There’s even some whirlpool belt Drive washer parts that you can still get

Parts pricing is an interesting business whirlpool went to a minimum dealer cost on a part of $2.52 about 15 years ago, it makes no sense to have parts on your books that only cost $.50. This is why the cost of small things like the rubber foot for a Maytag washer immediately jumped on our dealer cost list that part was 252 as soon as whirlpool took over Maytag. I remember parts in the Maytag books that only cost seven cents that did not make good sense from a business perspective. It wasn’t worth the time to write them up.

John

 

[ryner1988]

Let's not forget that even though the full-size direct drive washers were fully discontinued in 2011, the stacked sets were produced all the way through 2017. so I would think this means, and someone feel free to correct me if I am wrong, that even though machine-specific parts like timers will continue to become unavailable through Whirlpool, they will still offer their major parts that go in all their Dd machines, i.e., coupler, clutch and gearcase, until at least 2033. That's another decade, as noted above.

That said I heeded the warnings of individuals on here who told me the new gearcases are crap and went with a rebuilt one when my bro-in-law repaired my machine over Christmas.

Ryne

 

[scantpear1985]

Drive block discontinued…

You talk drive block, it is actually the drive TUBE that has been discontinued the drive block is still used today on the cheap washers… whirlpool needs to stop randomly clicking parts to stop making and actually not discontinue parts PERIOD… it looks like whirlpool wants us to buy their not working dumpsters of washing machines nowadays…