I have a Whirlpool Washer, Model No. WTW4800XQ2. This model uses a belt drive with an actuator and splutch. It is a little over one year old and has developed a problem, so it is no longer under warranty. The tub drains, but the clothes are left soaking wet.

I took off the back panel so that I can watch the parts in action. I also removed the lid lock from the lid and placed it in the slot so that I can watch the filling, agitator and draining actions. When it starts, you can hear the lid lock activate, then it starts filling the tub. For a small load, it took about 8 minutes to fill. The wash cycle lasted about 21 minutes. The rinse cycle lasted about 2 minutes, and the spin cycle lasted about 6 minutes. The total was about 37 minutes.

During the wash cycle, I noticed that the agitator immediately started at about 8:10, but only operated for 30 seconds then stopped. It did this twice during the wash cycle (2nd interval from 18:45 to 19:15). So it appears the motor is fine because it is turning the pulley and moving the agitator. During the wash, rinse and spin cycles, the drain comes on and off at various intervals, but never spins. The pulley is engaging and disengaging, so I assume the actuator is working fine.

Any idea as to why it will not agitate longer than two 30 second intervals in the wash cycle, and will not spin at all during any cycles?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

It's not agitating. The motor is supposed to reverse itself during agitation. Your motor is only rotating in one direction. The direction that it is not working in is also the direction it would be going in for spin mode. The washer normally should do a fast agitation for 30 seconds and then switch to a slower longer stroke agitation for the rest of the cycle. The question is, is this a motor problem or a board problem? Check the motor connector, unplug and replug, jiggle the wires while its operating if you can, watch your fingers! Check the connection as well at the control board. If no joy, check the motor windings resistance with a multimeter. Unplug the connector and check resistance between the motor white wire and yellow wire and between the white wire and the red wire. Both readings should be between 3.5 to 6 ohms. If the motor reads good, check the continuity of the wires between the motor and the control board. Bad connections and broken wires are a known problem with these washers.

Eric

When the washer works fine, it has to weigh enough laundry to so the longer one seccond long agitation strokes but when it does not weigh enough, it does shorter strokes like how it does to even the load before it spins... hiw can i stop it from doing that. What part on the board do i need to remove from the solder? Because i know it has to do with whirlpools non common sense programing... then the 2015 generation comes out and that issue is not engineered i to the board anymore but they remove the spin speed option and then limit the spin speed to 660 which is only 10 rpm faster than the old school washers... the maytag mvwx655dw has a extra rinse switch and fabruc softener switch. The fabric softener switch is useless because it adds an extra inch of water but still flushes the softener out when it is turned off... they should have added a spin speed switch and have it fill a little bit more for the rinse weather we use fabric softener or not... whirlpool is ridiculous... wjirlpool did make changes with the sensing agitation for the 2011/2014 models but that does nothing but waste more time... keep the board as is and remove the short strokes from it and eemove the fabric softener buttion from it as well... then that would be a perfect he top load washer... the touch screen style which came out in 2015, whirlpool kenmore and maytag, if we pause the washer and the final spin is on high/max, it will change it to low. So let the washer go without paising it or deal with a high energy bill... whirlpool are clowns for all of this. I can program those boards a lot better than whirlpool can... shame on you whirlpool!!