My washer stopped working mid-cycle. My wife took the clothes out and the tub was half full of water. When I held the start button down, the water drained out, but nothing else happened.

After some research, I figured it might be the infamous wax motor problem. I looked at the control board and the resistors all looked good, so I just replaced the wax motor. When I pressed the start button after installing it, I got more noise than before, so I stopped it and loaded clothes to test. Well, that didn't work. Nothing happened. I will sometimes get a flicker of the power light, but the door locked light doesn't come on at all. I've tried starting it at various points in a cycle, and I do get noises (one sounds like a timer, and another sounds like it's filling with water, even though it isn't). But it won't work. And pressing and releasing the start button does nothing.

I still have a feeling it has something to do with the door lock. After putting in the new wax motor, I pressed the switch on the door lock spin enable switch, and I got more noises after that when I held the start button down. But not enough noises to actually work...

What should I be looking for next?

And this may be relevant, but I doubt it. There's a green plastic, thin wire-like thingy attached to the door light lock switch. It's not an electrical wire or a tube, just a solid plastic strip. It's about 8-10" long, and one end is hanging free. It looks like the free end might have been attached to the door lock light switch too, to form a loop, but I can't see what it would have looped around. And the instructions for the new wax motor show it going through a screw hole, so that can't be right. Any idea where that goes or what it does?

Well, that was easy. I have the tech sheet, but hadn't seen the diagnostics. I got stopped at the first step, which doesn't seem to fit my unit. No matter, I saw a reference further down to a fuse on the motor control board, so I pulled that out. The fuse is fine, but a few of the electronic parts look fried, so I guess I need a new board. And I gather you have to buy both the board and the motor, right?

Is there anything else I should be looking at before I drop a bunch of $$ on these parts?

Edit: My warranty is 10 years on the drive motor. I'll call Maytag (or whoever is handling their service now) tomorrow and see if the conversion kit is covered. I may get off lucky...

I called the Maytag service number that came with the machine. Amazingly, they're still there. Even more amazingly, they're going to send me the replacement parts, without my having to send in the old part. So far, I'm a happy camper...

I hope so. I still have to pull the thing out far enough to get to the back, without getting eaten alive by the dust wolves.