[FalconFour]

I don't believe it... I've seen a few washers with this problem, and I searched around but found nothing at all.

A friend of mine just got a Kenmore 80 Series washer. Looks pretty new, still has the blue plastic on the front panel, though it's kinda... melded with the panel now. I know it's over 5 years old just looking at the internals. Today we replaced the clutch and agitator dogs. That was fun.

But it still has the problem that caused the clutch to burn out to begin with: it spins while draining. As I know about these Kenmore washers, they use 1 motor to agitate, drain, and spin. The motor goes one direction to agitate, the other direction to drain and spin. When it changes direction, the transmission locks out the spin for the first "reversal", until the motor lowers speed (stops) and it disengages this "neutral lock" and engages the spin upon the next activation of the motor in the same direction. So the timer box is supposed to go agitate (forward) -> pause -> drain (reverse) -> pause -> spin (reverse).

Problem is, it "drains" for about 1 second before the transmission loses that "lock" and starts spinning while the basket is full of water, instead of waiting for the timer to stop the motor so it can disengage. That burns through the clutch big time as it spins slowly for about 30 seconds-1 minute while still full of water.

I had the transmission case opened up earlier today to see what could possibly be causing that, but I didn't have the proper tools or guidance to confidently go into it. I ended up reassembling it and hoping the new clutch would fix it. It certainly spins faster and gets up to speed quicker now, but like clockwork, it always misses the "neutral-lockout" and starts spinning right after an agitate. This can't keep going on like this, I told my friend he'll probably have another month before he burns out this clutch as well (and he was NOT happy with paying $50 for the clutch either).

What can be done to fix this, in the transmission or otherwise?

edit: Oohh, using the "model" link above, I learned the phrase I was looking to search for: "neutral drain". I was searching for "drain before spin" or "spinning while draining". Using the phrase "neutral drain" I found a bunch of new info. But I could still use a pointer if anyone has any advice

[sidfink43]

Your problem likely is in the transmission. To pump out the water the motor reverses itself and the transmission goes into neutral. Your transmission will not stay in neutral. You can try rebuilding the transmission or you can replace it.

Here is a service manual that may hellp.

https://secured.whirlpool.com/Servic...$FILE/L-55.pdf

[FalconFour]

Well, cheapskate friend decided it works well enough as it is (I beg to differ), and that he ran a load and watched it, and that it was actually working fine. Weird. Maybe I wasn't giving it enough agitating time to reset the neutral-drain mechanism (I was originally under the impression that it "sets" itself as soon as it goes into agitate, I was testing it with just 1-2 seconds of agitating). Or maybe it still is messed up...

I found this kit to repair the neutral-drain:
Part Details - WHIRLPOOL Neutral drain kit, part number: AP3018165

Maybe if it's still having problems, I'll replace that (and yeah, I know it involves tearing apart the transmission, but that's the fun part!). Also helps to know I should take the motor off the transmission before removing it next time... had a pain-in-the-arse of a time getting it out last time

[sidfink43]

Sounds like you are on top of it.

Good luck!