At the end of a wash cycle today, I heard a loud thumping like the load was WAY off balance. I went in to stop the spin and see if I could adjust it. There was about 4 mins left on the cycle and when i opened the front door, i noticed small white specs on some of the clothes near the door and the faint odor of burning plastic. On closer inspection, it appears that the tub was grinding the plastic edge of the tub enclosure (see pics). The edge was ground up pretty much all the way around except for a small section from about the 10:00 to the 11:00 positions. Most of the plastic just balled up and adhered to the edge, but some of the plastic frayed off and this is what was on my clothes.

When I try moving the tub up and down, the plastic part seems to move with the tub. When i turn the tub, though, i see that the tub seems to turn on a different axis and I can see where it wobbles closer to the plastic edge. I did have a large load when I noticed this and so I'm assuming that contributed enough to make the tub and plastic edge touch and friction did the rest. What I'm trying to figure out is what this is a symptom of...I did the check for rear bearing (no noise or rough feel when turning, and no thumping when grabbing it at the 12 and 6 and moving in/out/up/down).


Any ideas?

So I cleared all the loose plastic that was ground off the edge of the front tub assembly, put it back together and now (with a regular size load) the spin cycle is very wobbly. When it reaches the high rpms at the end of the cycle, it starts thumping very loudly.

I tried grabbing the tub and moving it several directions, listening for any noise and there was none. I do not hear any noise when I manually spin the drum, although it does seem to spin off-center.

Does this sound like a bearing problem or perhaps a problem with one (or multiple) shock absorber supports? How can I tell?