Maytag Control Board
I wanted to share the empowering experience I had of fixing my own washing machine. Our 10 year old Maytag Neptune washer started acting up a few weeks ago. Initially it started with soapy water leaking out the door. As I do now with everything that breaks around the house, I did the old college try of troubleshooting it myself. This ended in failure and wisps of smoke emitting from the back of the washer - not good!
So the Appliance Service Center was called, and their guy came out to do his thing. I got home from work that day and looked at the estimate of $550 to replace the timer and the rubber "boot" and quietly freaked out. That seemed like half the price of buying a new washer to repair a 10 year old machine.
At this point I did what I should have done before calling the repair guy, and Googled it. I found a wealth of resources online, especially this one, which I can't say too much about. I found the entire service manual online, as well as much information about specific design flaws and their fixes.
I won't go in to the whole sordid details, other than to say that last week I opened up the front of the machine, replaced the wax motor (have not idea why it's called that), then opened up the top console and replaced the control board (about $225). I put it all back together and summoned my lovely wife. And ... it worked! And has been working for over a week now. And for much less than the $550 quoted by the wankers at Appliance Service Center, even after paying $109 for the privilege of having them mis-diagnose.
Alright, that's my story and it has a happy ending :-)
