I'm guessing at the age, as I bought the machine used.

The machine seems to do everything fine except spin. When it's in the spin cycle, I can hear the motor kick in and start running, but the tub does not spin. If I bypass the lid switch and give the tub a spin by hand it will slowly get up to speed and spin for the rest of the spin cycle. I have to repeat this step for the second spin cycle.

It does spin at the end of the wash cycle when it is draining, though. This appears to be a slower spin, so maybe that affects it?

Also, if I don't have any clothes in the washer, and run it through a spin cycle with just a half tub of water, it spins fine... no manual jumpstart required.

So, I don't think it's the timer or lid switch. I'm guessing something along the lines of the transmission or clutch, but I don't know about all the parts involved down there.

I did take the washer apart and check the drive coupling - it looks fine. The motor also appears to start and spin fine when it is not connected to anything.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance,
Jacob

Sounds like clutch isn't engaging all the way. Does it work better with a smaller load in there?

There is a way to recondition the clutch. You can take out the inner part of the clutch assembly and roughen up the pads with sand paper, then put a small washer on either side of the spring to make the whole inner part of the clutch tighter in general so it "grabs" on better.

I learned this trick from Angel at Do it yourself washing machine and dryer repair help

The videos he's done have helped me repair every issue I've ever had with my washers or dryers. The clutch assembly is fairly cheap anyway, but requires a special tool to remove the spanner nut that's inside the agitator assembly.

You can recondition the clutch as mentioned above and it should give you another 6 months of use easily, but I'd just replace the whole thing if you find that's probably the issue.