E41 Woes...

Washer Repair
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:confused: :frowning: :mad: Perplexed and confused… 4 months ago my Frigidaire Affinity front load washer stopped working. It beeped and died. After one week of sitting the Sears repair guy came and lo and behold, it started up and ran fine. :confused: The repair guy was real nice though. He told me that based on what I described he would recommend changing the control panel. He further said that I could buy it online and pop it in myself to save some $. Great idea. However, I never needed to look into it because my washer has been working fine ever since. That is until last week.

Last week the washer would start up fine and then all of a sudden it would just shut down mid cycle. So I decided to purchase a control board. It arrived yesterday and I installed it - itʻs not rocket science, just a few screws and clips - very simple procedure. Once I put everything back together I plugged it in and ran the spin cycle. The door locked, the washer started up and began to spin. After watching it for several minutes with satisfaction I decided to cancel the cycle and put in a load of laundry.

When I put the load in and started it, this time there was a pause and the display started to flash "PAU." I unplugged it and tried again several times with the same result. After running through the Washer Tech Data Sheet I ran a diagnostic and the error code E41 (control panel thinks the door is open) popped up. I then proceeded to follow the troubleshooting instructions: I checked the power to the J2 plug then checked the door strike etc. If everything checks out then it says to either change the control panel or the "door switch assembly."

The reason Iʻm posting all this is to see if anyone else has had similar problems. And if so, then did a new door assembly do the trick? My concern is that I just spent $130 on the control panel and I wouldnʻt want to spend another $70 on a door assembly if that isnʻt the problem. Could it be that the control panel is faulty? I would appreciate any thoughts from the experts. Thanks for your help in advance.

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The "pau" is pause because you hit the start button or pause button. Could be either one fridgedaires are known for control issue there cheaply made parts and a pain to sometime’s work on. But in all fairness the door locks go out on front loaders quite often. Check your connections between the main board and the door lock and check all that circuitry. Look for damaged or burnt wires and make sure all contacts on the connections are cleaned. The way fridgedaire wires there washers and dryers they can be a pain just like there dryers you can have a door error and it will have nothing to do with the door or the main control and you’ll find a burned out thermal cutoff in another section thats part of the same circuit. The engineers at Fridgedaire are either very cheap employees or smoking some really good stuff.

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Thanks HumboldtRepairMan. I actually did check all the wires and connections and then checked them again. As far as I can tell, everything is clean with solid connections. Nothing is out of place - everything looks good. So since I just replaced the control board and you say that the door locks go out quite often, then I guess the only thing to do is buy a door switch assembly.

What was so baffling to me though is that once I changed the control panel and started it, it worked. The door locked and it started spinning and everything. And then when I stopped it and put a load in, it didn’t work. Maybe it’s just coincidence but I thought it was highly unlikely that another component would crap out right when I installed a new control board. Oh well, such is the nature of technology I guess - when they work, they’re great but they can be so damn fickle.:frowning: