Hello,

I am looking for some assistance with a GE washing machine. (WHDSR315D0WW - Top Loader) The machine is my mothers and I am not familiar with it's normal operation. My mother reported that she recently heard 3 loud noises like something may have broken. She then said that when she looked in the washing machine the agitator wasn't working.

I went over there today to take a look. The machine spins and drains ok.
I found that the agitator seemed to work during the early stages of the cycle but towards then end, it wouldn't. You could hear it making a sound similar back and forth sound with a fairly quick cadence. The sound itself is difficult to describe but is sort of like a steam engine train spitting out steam. (Not really, but sort of.) My assumption is that this is when the agitator should but working but I am not even entirely sure of that. If not, i don't know what the back and forth sound is since it isn't spinning, draining or agitating at this particular time. Nothing is happening.

Since the agitator works on parts of the cycle, I didn't think this would be the cogs in the agitator but not really sure. Does this agitator have 2 different modes/speeds where perhaps one portion of the agitator may be broken?

Also, when I was doing some testing today, I only had a couple of towels in there. I thought about this after I left that I should have tried a heavier load to see if the agitator wouldn't work at all instead of just intermittent as it was with my testing.

As a side note, I did notice that the timer is very loud but my mom said she thought it had always been loud.

Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.