Frigidaire Gallery 16-cycle. Either not draining and/or spin cycle is broken. At end of washing cycle where spin cycle should kick in, drum just slowly turns, back and forth until shut-off. Cycle completes with clothes soaked, sitting in a pool of water that won't drain. Has a 'Spin Cycle Speed' knob (slow/medium/fast) which is completely unresponsive. Drain hose feels like it's full of water. Ran kitchen sink for a while upstairs to see if maybe the main drain line is clogged, but it does not appear so. We recently had our electrical service upgraded (new breakers, panel box, etc.). Don't know if that's a factor or not.
Thanks.

repairclinic.com type in model # & symptoms. Good luck.

sounds like something is stuck in the pump. Are you missing any socks, underwear, or other small stuff ?
when you can drain the water out of the washer and are sure there is none left, pull the hose off the pump inlet, I bet you find something jamming it

almost certainly there is a control or limit switch problem. particularly with those gollywog super computer control panels with lots of little lights and buttons. seems the engineers can't get it through their little heads that water and computers don't mix.

the drum not spinning is the key. there is a solenoid or a second motor or some other transferral system to get a different motion out of the transmission into the drum. that could be the solenoid.

it could be the transmission -- I was told by the DEY parts guys that Whirlpool (and allied brands) transmissions are NOT sealed -- there is an open space on the top. and the magic fluid in there is not a stocked item, and costly. so don't tip them. Frigidaire (and allied brands) might have a similar gotcha... don't know.

repairclinic.com is an excellent place to start troubleshooting.

If it were me, I would find out how your Frigidaire washer motor reverses direction.

This is where I fly off on a tangent...

You see, so far as I know, all home appliances (including washing machines, electric clothes dryers and even the motor inside the compressor of your fridge) will use induction motors. All induction motors will have two windings in them; a start winding and a run winding.

There are two common kinds (and one uncommon kind) of induction motor, namely:
1. "split phase motors"
2. "capacitor start motors" in all their permutations including "capacitor run motors" and "capacitor start/capacitor run" motors, and
3. the uncommon kind (called a "resistance start motor").

All induction motors have the useful characteristic that they're perfectly happy to turn in either direction; all you have to do is reverse the wires going to the start and run windings in the motor. By reversing those two wires, the motor will happily turn in the opposite direction for you, with the same starting torque, power and electrical efficiency.

So, on all the washing machines I know of, this property of induction motors is used to advantage by having the motor turn one way during the agitate cycle and in the opposite direction during the spin cycle.

On Maytag top loading washers, the reversing of the motor direction is done with something called a "motor reversing relay" which is controlled by the PC board in the console of the washer. That relay uses a 4 volt DC signal from the PC board to energize an electromagnet that pulls two pair of contacts apart against spring tension, and slaps two pair of contacts together, thereby reversing the wire connections to the start and run windings of the motor.

And this is where I return from that tangent...

If your motor works fine during the agitate cycle, then there's nothing wrong with the motor. But, if it goes into a self induced coma when it's supposed to reverse it's direction of rotation (during the spin cycle) then I would look most suspiciously at whatever component reverses the wiring to the start and run windings in your washer's motor. Most likely that will be a relay of some sort controlled by your washer's timer or PC board. I expect what's happening is that the electromagnet is breaking the connections as they are, but not following through to complete the reversed connections. That could be due to a broken contact inside the relay or perhaps a wire terminal burned off on that relay.

PS:

If you rely on a local "handyman" to repair your appliances, you should know about a nasty thing they can do to you called a "cold crimp".

In major appliances it's common to find connections made with push on terminals "crimped" onto wires. This kind of connection is made with a tool called a pair of "crimping pliers" or just "crimping tool". The crimping pliers basically squeeze the terminal onto the wire so hard that it deforms the terminal, making a permanent connection between the terminal and the wire.

In making a cold crimp, the handyman doing the repair will grimace when he's crimping a terminal onto a wire as though he's squeezing that crimping tool really really hard, but in reality he's not squeezing it very hard at all.

When you do that on a wire terminal that's carrying any serious amperage, the result will be that the heating and cooling of the terminal while it's in service will cause the crimped connection to loosen up in time and electric arcing to occur between the wire and the terminal. That crimped connection will then start getting very hot when there's current flowing through it, and in a few months to a year or so the wire will burn off at that terminal causing your appliance to go on the blink again.

Then, you're back on the phone to that same handyman asking him to come over and fix your appliance yet again. If he's putting cold crimps in at different places in your appliances, then it'll appear to you as though the wires are burning off in different places at random. The truth is that he's playing you for the money you're slipping him every time he comes over to fix something.

If a terminal is crimped tightly onto a wire, that wire isn't going to burn off. If crimped connections did that by themselves, they wouldn't be so commonly used in appliances. Also, wires burning off at terminals would be commonplace. A wire burning off at a terminal ISN'T common; not at all. But, if it seems to be happening all the time on your appliances, then your handyman is cold crimping your wire terminals and you need to find another handyman.

Alternatively, make a mental note of which terminal your handyman crimped, buy your own pair of crimpling pliers and crimp it properly (read as: "squeeze the bygeezus out of the crimping pliers when crimping that terminal" after he leaves.
(There is no such thing as crimping a terminal onto a wire TOO tightly.) That way, you retain the benefit of having someone you can call who'll fix your appliances on the cheap, but whom you'll now also have the benefit of calling much less often.

An even better way to make a crimped joint is to crimp the terminal onto the wire properly first, and then heat the terminal with a soldering iron (or gun) and solder the crimped terminal onto the wire.

But, really, if a crimped connection is properly made, you won't have any problems with it so there's not a lot of benefit to be had in soldering a crimped terminal. Soldering a crimped terminal is THE MOST reliable way to connect a terminal to a wire, but crimping is reliable enough that it's hard to justify the additional investment in time and effort to also solder the crimped connection.

It's unfortunate, but you gotta know stuff like this to protect yourself from people whom you might think are your "friends".

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nestor,

/gripe/ almost every crimp tool I have ever seen depends purely on the user to make a good crimp. virtually all of them also have the cutting/stripping cuts in the tool right by where you are cutting, so slicing a finger or hand open is a constant threat.

the exceptions are the $280-400 specialized communications tools that use a ratchet assembly to consistently apply the correct crimp pressure to a single fitting type, then spring open.

the only reason those tools are $280-400 is that they are one-use specialized tools sold in small quantities unique to one vendor's magic connectors.

if I had a ratchet/release tool for common electrical connectors availiable to me, $40 would not be too high a price. they'd sell a million.

and that's why you have crummy crimps. crummy tools.