You didn't cite the model number but unlikely there's a bolt in the motor. Assuming it's the Alpha or Alpha 2 design that uses a direct-drive motor, there is a bolt that attaches the rotor to the drum shaft but it's not something that would be "thrown" so much as loosen, in which case it can be retightened, unless the rotor splines stripped in which case the rotor can be replaced.

More likely the drum support spider cracked (which is a major repair). Or one of the concrete ballast blocks broke loose, which could involve a bolt.

That could well be it. The repairman said he had to replace the tub. It is a WFW95HE something or other. He also said that it can something could be tightened sometimes, but not in this case. He seemed pretty thorough.

The inner drum and outer tub are sourced as a single assembly, very expensive to replace ... so a new machine is the best course if the drum spider failed. The concern is why did it fail so soon (3 to 4 years). Bad usage habits are a common cause ... too much cold water washing, no chlorine bleach on any loads, and insufficient detergent to condition the water and handle soil allows residue and mold to accumulate on it which accelerates deterioration.

The serial number is coded for the date of manufacture to confirm the age if you're not sure (the coding may not be obvious, must know how to decode it or look up the syntax online).

I don't have any suggestions for a new washer, I haven't bought one in 16 years.

I'd recommend a full sized, LG front loader -- they have a long history of making excellent washing machines, and my experience with them has been very good (shortened life to 11 years because I was using too much liquid detergent - my fault). Front loaders will save you water and - if you use a dryer - energy as well, which has got to be important in a big family, while treating your clothes better.

We are a family of 9. I use hot or warm water washes with enough detergent. At least I hope so! I do use bleach, but not super often, and I wipe it out to prevent mold. We also have mold allergies and I do not like stinky machines. I prefer powder detergents and was using Persil for a while. My husband used to bring me whatever he could find from Europe and I kept those on hand for a while. I've been using All Free and Clear lately since we have had some skin issues. At least one of mine is allergic to Tide, including the Free and Gentle version. I do a lot of laundry, but the machine still should have lasted longer.

It's funny, this machine has not been good to our clothing. I don't know why. The front loader before this was much more gentle. I'll look into the LG machines. They seem to be a favorite here.

Ajmadison has the Miele W1 for $1200 right now. How does it compare to the LG WM3900H? I know that it's smaller.

Miele is in another class. It should last you a good long time pretty trouble free.

The only thing is it's half the size (drum size) as the Duet was 4.2 vs Miele 2.26.

You can fill a Miele pretty full but with 6 kids and I assume two adults you may be doing laundry more frequently.

If you did laundry in the past daily or a few times a week then you should be able to keep the same schedule.

Oh, if you don't mind spending the money, I'd say a Miele is a better machine - I just don't think it's enough better to warrant the increase in price for me. The Miele's are smaller than the full sized LGs, but if you can get a good sale, then costs aren't as much an issue.

@suseyb

We are a family of 14. 12 kids plus mom and dad. Oldest is 20 and still lives at home. We have one set of Miele W1/T1. We have the top models of each. The top mode washer has a recirculating pump.

We do all of our laundry in them. Excellent machines. We have had the W1 for just under two years and it has just under 5000 hours on the meter. Zero problems.

Would never choose an LG over the Miele set. They are not even in the same class. Sort of like comparing a Chevy Malibu and an Audi A6. They only thing they really have in common is that they are cars and about the same size.

If the cost of the Miele is not out of your range, you will be VERY happy with them. Don’t let the smallish size scare you. They can swallow a lot of laundry.

We had a Miele 4842 for 7 years. I still have the matching dryer. The washer died after 7 years died it was going to cost more to buy the Whirlpool I replaced it with. In retrospect, I should have fixed it. I did get the Whirlpool for a great price. Right now, I can get a LG for $1000 or so. There are no sales around right now, and they are not even guaranteeing that anything from Korea is in stock. It's not much more to get the BOL Miele, which honestly, is likely better than the TOL LG. I have considered a Speed Queen, but I've had a front loader for so long that I don't know that I want to do that. I am tempted by the short washing times.

There are 5 adults and 4 children here. One of the adults doesn't do her laundry with my machine The rest do their own laundry here. We didn't expect one of them to still be here, but with the Covid, life sometimes causes a few dips and turns that change the journey. I think I finally have everyone out of diapers, but when I do wash diapers, we do more laundry. I also wash napkins/towels/etc rather than using paper.

The Whirlpool was fine. It washed fine. I liked the extra rinse option because I have a lot of dirty clothes and getting dirt off before running a full wash helps with cleanliness. AFAICT, most machines will do a prewash, but they use the same water for the prewash and the wash, and um. Yuck.

One of these days, I will have fewer kids here, and it will be better. In the meantime, I need a machine that will run every day, multiple times a day, and clean well. I'd rather not replace the machine every 3 years.

Miele is the only residential manufacturer that states that they design their laundry appliances to last 10K operating hours. Professional/Commercial machines are designed for 30K hours.

We had a W4840 that lasted us about 7 years, but it had 15K hours on the clock when the bearings went out. By that time we had done one or two repairs on it after it passed 10K hours. We decided to just buy new units. We also seemed to do less laundry when the kids were younger. The older kids do some laundry on their own. My oldest daughter does a lot of it as part of her fee for living at home rent free. She is a sorting/colors person and does not like it when others change her laundry method.

I do all of my laundry myself as I have shirts with linen, pants with wool, etc. and I don't want water temp/detergent mistakes to shrink or felt my clothes. I like the Miele for this as there are cycles for all of these items.

I would highly recommend you go with the TOL if you go with Miele. The TwinDOS and recirculating pump you get with the 860 model are really worth the extra money. I know its a big jump in price, but if you divide the cost over the life of the washer it all evens out.

The appliance sales guy said there is no way any other manufacturer would hold up doing 3-5 loads a day, every day. He said with that much laundry if you don't buy speed queen or Miele you MUST buy the extended warranty since the machine will burn itself out within two years. Most people don't have large families anymore so they can not fathom doing that volume of laundry.

Once it becomes normal to just toss all the towels in the washer mid morning after everyone has showered (thats a full load) and then walk away for a while it just becomes second nature. Our washer is right next to the main shower/bathroom so the laundry doesn't have to be fetched from anywhere. The rest of the laundry is just whatever accumulates. One large bin for colors, one for whites.

We normally only buy cotton or similar material so we can wash items at 120-140F without worrying about ruining the garment. This gets clothes cleaner and the removes most stains. The Miele washer gets the temps to where they are supposed to be with no guessing what temp Warm, Hot, etc. is. You can switch the display to show actual water temp in degrees C or degrees F. So no mistakes.

I don't know where you live, but Miele has showrooms in various parts of the country. You can literally bring your laundry to the show room and do a load to see what you think of them. It you are within 100 miles and like to take short trips, it might be fun.

luna123456 I went to look at the Miele today. We don't have any showrooms, but we have a Nebraska Furniture Mart. I am worried about the size of this thing. How many loads a week did you do in the 4842 versus the W1? Is it super tiny.

They had a LG 3900 in the scratch and dent that they wanted $800 for, and an Electrolux 627 that they wanted $700 for. For the money, I could buy the LG at Costco, and get a 4 year warranty. It would last me at least 4 years then. I hope.

Appliances are hard to choose. Laundry is a huge part of my life. I know it won't always be, but I don't want it to be a chore.

We did about the same. The big Miele machines w4840 and w4842 were only rated for 8kg of laundry (just like the w1). Many people over loaded them and this is why so many had problems with them.

We did about the same amount of laundry then as now. Obviously with bigger kids we have a little more. We have also add more kids, lol.

it really comes down to how you do laundry. Are you a collect is for 3-5 days and do it all at once? Do you do fewer loads every day?

We always have done loads loads every day. It was overwhelming, even with a big machine, do it all at once. most has to be folded anyway.

Take you most washed items (clean) into the store. They won’t be wierded out, trust me. See how much you can put in. You fill the w1 all the way to the top without shoving it in tight.

another way to gauge is step On the scale at home with an empty laundry basket. Then fill the basket up until you have 17.5 lbs of laundry in there. That is about 8kg. You should get close or over a full laundry basket.

We get 12-14 bath towels in one load. There are standard side bath towels not the ultra plush kind size ones. One towel per male and usually one towel plus one smaller towels for hair for females.

The showroom is a bad place to compare size as the machine is in a huge location. Makes it look tiny.

Look up the LG and see if it has a max capacity rating. Most 27” washers are not rated for more than 8-9kg of laundry even though you can cram a lot more in.

Good luck on the decision.

I ended up purchasing a Speed Queen front loader. It doesn't have an on board heater, but seems to be getting the clothes clean.

A relief to be done with washer research and shopping, eh?

Looking past the $1900 cost, the SQ front loaders are good washers and much speedier than most front loader models. That speed can be a big deal when, as you say, "Laundry is a huge part of my life . . . but I don't want it to be a chore."

The lack of an on-board water heater may or may not be a problem depending on how far the washer is from your hot water heater. The Automatic Temperature Control (ATC) on the SQ front load models does not temper the incoming hot water and the washer seems to do a pretty good job of holding heat for a wash cycle. Have you seen JeffreyCaban's thread which discusses the tests he ran? The thread is: My Three Weeks And Counting With A Speed Queen FL

Although Jeff bought and discussed the previous FL iteration, the current SQ is very much the same as the prior one. The current model differs only in having a left hinged door as the standard option (prior models' doors were mostly hinged on the right), having renamed the third extra rinse option as "allergy rinse," and replacing the former "rinse and spin" cycle with a "Sanitze with Oxy" cycle. (A rinse and spin is still available by choosing the “spin” cycle and pressing the option button for an “extra rinse.”)

Reviews of and tips for using the prior version still apply. (In that regard, if you would like to see a well-reasoned engineering perspective on SQ FL models that may help rationalize paying so much for a washer (or least ease some of the sting of the expense of the SQ), you might check out the long opening post from a thread from several years ago by forum member SanDiegoSteve which you can find here.)

That similarity points up a potential advantage with a SQ --- very long, very stable production runs so replacement parts remain available for decades. Partly a consequence of selling mostly to the commercial rather than residential market. The repairabilty and long availability of parts seems to be the basis for Speed Queen's vying with Miele by boasting about having 25-year/10,400 cycle product lives. It isn't so much that SQ FL models never need repairs but, rather, that they are designed for servicing and they are so expensive that it can make economic sense to repair them when we might not bother with a much less expensive washer model. In that regard, it does not hurt that SQs are DIY-repair friendly.

You mentioned possibly getting a 4 year warranty on an LG bought from Costco. FWIW, the Speed Queen FLs come with a 5-year full warranty. That can be a good or bad thing because Speed Queen depends on the selling dealer to handle warranty service. Some dealers are very capable, others not so much. Hopefully, you checked out your dealer before buying.

But, back to the lack of an on-board water heater. If you need hotter "hot" washes or a warmer "warm' wash --- note that the SQ's ATC targets a dumbed-down 80°F for warm washes --- there are a couple of ways to add that kind of function to a Speed Queen FL.

The simplest one has been favored by some Speed Queen dealers (who post on the AutomaticWasher site) but works with many other heater-less front load washers; add a small, inexpensive 120volt on-demand water heater to the washer's cold water supply line, one that plugs into a regular wall outlet. This works because most ATCs only control the flow through the hot water line. So, about 15 minutes before you want a hotter or warmer wash, you switch on the in-line water heater and set it to your desired warm or hot temperature. When the washer has filled, you switch off the heater. Or, if you want a warm rinse, you dial down the water heater temp for that. Obviously, this does not offer the same convenience and flexibility you might get with a Miele W-1, nor does it enable an automatic profile wash if that is something you often need.

An alternative hotter/warmer method discussed on the AutomaticWasher site is for when the washer is close to the water heater: making your own mixing valve by plumbing valves into the water lines so you can manually mix hot and cold water to whatever temp you want for any given wash cycle and/or rinse cycle. IMO, that kind of thing is best left to those with some plumbing skills and PEX water lines.

We are a family of nine. I love love love my old school Speed Queen top loader and matching dryer. Purchased in 2016. No regrets. But truth be told, my 25 year old (in 2016) Whirlpool was a better washer-more cycles and options and a bigger tub. As much water as you'd like.

Time will tell if it will outlast the old Whirlpool set, but we certainly do love this Speed Queen.

@cupofkindnessgw I'm just not interested in a top loader. I have had a front loader for so many years that I don't want to go back to the small loads.

@jwvideo Yes! I was set on the LG, and tried to purchase it multiple times, but things kept getting in the way. Then I found this SQ on a used site, and bought it. It's a 2016 model, so doesn't have some of the options you wrote about. It doesn't have a soak, or a bulky cycle, FE. But, it seems to work well. I'd like more water in the rinse.

I'm working on the heater issue. I turned up my water heater, but it makes the showers too hot. I've turned it down, and may look into a y adapter or an electric mini water heater at the machine. We do have pex lines, but I think it may be easier to go the water heater route. We've also discussed getting a tankless water heater, and if we were to do that, since the washer is so very close to where the water heater is, I would likely be able to get away without having the small water heater.

So far, so good. I'm hoping this lasts longer than 3 years. It seems very well made. I'm happy with the right side hinge on the door because now it matches my dryer. I've done a ton of laundry in it already, and am learning how it works. Thank you for the reply. I appreciate it.

I have to chuckle. You would think with all the bells & whistles plus the high cost of these fancy machines, they should fold and put up the clothes, too! We just need our clothes washed.

"We just need our clothes washed."

I also want a machine that is water and energy efficient - washing clothes isn't enough for me.