Lower agitator woes

Washer Repair
1

A few weeks ago our washer went briefly out of balance and since then has been making a very loud banging noise during the ‘heavy’ (if the load is started on regular, the noise doesn’t occur) portion of agitation. The banging lasts for 6 min and then returns during the agitating rinse portion of the cycle. Popping open the lid during the banging shows what appears to be over agitation by the bottom agitator with clothes being wrapped around the bottom agitator (though the banging occurs with clothes not large enough to get wrapped). Agitator dogs have been replaced to no avail. Otherwise, the washer works fine.

I’ve also found that the the top and bottom agitators loosely fit together. I ordered a drive block, but I don’t quite think thats the problem and I’m not yet willing to commit to no washer (with 2 young children) without an inkling of what the problem is.

The banging is really loud, resulting in washing only being done when running out of the house.

Any ideas? Troubleshooting? I haven’t been able to find much because the rest of the cycles are fine. Clothes are clean and spun, just sometimes tightly wound around the agitator.

Thanks

3

Yours is a pretty mysterious problem. Usually a banging problem occurs in the spin cycle not the agitation. And the fact that it occurs only on the heavy cycle is equally strange.

It may be that your transmission is damaged in some way that only shows up with a very heavy load. But check out the brakes and make sure they are operating properly before doing anything else.