Good Evening Everybody.

I put a heavy load of clothes in my Maytag washer tonight and went back upstairs. It started making an extremely loud ratcheting/drillhammer noise and the drum was not spinning. I took all of the clothes out of the machine and tried to start it again with no luck. I tore the bottom portion apart so I could watch what was making the noise. The motor is turning the belt fine and it has no problems turning the transmission drive pully. The problem occurs when trying to transfer the movement to the drive lug. The transmission drive pulley seems to hop up and down on the drive lug as if there is not enough friction between the two. I took the drive lug off and all of the splines are in good shape, same with the splines on the shaft. Is there a spring that would hold tension down on the pulley to prevent this that could be broken? Everything seems fine other than the fact the pulley can just jump up and down freely on the drive lug so it cannot transfer the energy to the shaft that spins the tub. (The tub is spinning freely so its not like it is getting locked up) Thoughts on what may be wrong?

That is kind of what I feared... I was hoping there was a compression spring that may have broken that applied pressure to the transmission pulley somewhere that I could not see. Thank you for your response, you probably saved me a lot of headache.