Reviving out of balance Aquasmarts

Having come across two Fisher and Paykel AquaSmart washing machines, we noticed a rather similar problem with both of them. The machine almost always went out of balance with loads, and even with no load. Comparing the amount of force that it took to depress the bowls with a new machine in the store, it was obvious the hangers/suspension were not working well. Further research showed that filling the hangers with oil fixed the problem.

One of the people who had mentioned filling the hangers with oil drilled a hole in the plastic and resealed it. I instead chose a much less invasive means of filling them, heat cycling them. In this I used transformer oil/mineral oil to fill them, although you can generally use whatever you have on hand, such as motor oil.

First, we have to remove the hangers from the machine itself.

Pop out the two caps covering the screws on both sides

And then remove the screws.

You can hang the top of the machine up with something at this point, take care to not pull on the wiring and pipes too much in the back right corner. We used an ocky strap tied to a pipe above us. The hangers can be seen in all four corners.

You need to remove the rubber bands from the hangers, just by lifting them up and off. These apparently stop the drum from spinning, and most people replace these first when their machine goes out of balance. We made this mistake, they don't do much at all.

To remove the hangers, grab them and pull them upwards. You will be able to move them off the case at this point. Note, that the drum WILL fall to the ground and make a mess of the pump, motor and drain so either disconnect those or lay the machine on its side. In this machine we used older hangers in their place temporarily.

And here are the hangers out of the machine. The shiny metal tubes at the bottom are what we want to fill with oil, which are pretty well sealed.

This was my original setup to heat cycle them, using a water heater from an old dishwasher. You can put them in anything you want, I was originally going to use a kettle but it was a bit too shallow. The fan was used to cool the oil back down after heating. Note that the plastic top and bottom of the shock absorbers will melt if they touch the heat source.

The way I decided to do this was using science, where heating the shock absorber would make the air inside expand and escape, pulling in oil as it cools. You can see the bubbles coming out in the midst of a heating cycle here. I was reaching a bit over 110 degrees Celcius before the element cut out and started melting stuff.

And you want to try to get as much air out as possible. 

After heating the hanger in oil, let it cool down to a reasonable temperature, I went to around 40 degrees Celsius most of the time, then repeat the cycle. Now, yes, this is a very long winded process, and if you want, you can modify it however you like. I ended up (after realising how long it took to fill one hanger) getting a small container of cool oil and putting them in that after being heated, allowing for a quicker cycle time. (put in hot oil -> wait for bubbles to stop coming out -> put in cold oil)

Once you're confident you have most of the oil out of the hangers, go ahead and reverse the above process to put them back in. The little circle of rubber on the shaft of the hangers just stays there, it doesn't do anything that I am aware of.

Spin, baby spin!

Once your machine is reassembled, it should work much better than it did before. The machine which was featured here was going out of balance during a rinse with nothing in it. After filling the hangers with oil, it ran through cycles perfectly. Even a load of dirty rags not distributed at all managed to go without a hitch. Hopefully this fix works for your machine!

Credit again to post #7 and #8 on F&P Aquasmart, unbalance for the idea behind this.

Cheap fridges

We have a cheap little bar fridge, Chinese made ofcourse and from previous experience I'm pretty sure it has something stuck in the compressor... In an attempt to free it up, I swapped the start and run windings and got it to kick over, after which it ran normally. Weird part was that when it cycled on the thermostat, it can't restart.

I'm at a loss to figure out what is happening, thinking about tipping it on its side to maybe force the item out the discharge and hope it doesn't block the capillary tube. Problem with that is I'll be giving the compressor a drink of oil which it is very unlikely to enjoy. That and getting oil into the evaporator and stuff will probably make it sad. Hmm, only real choice I have though. Think I'll give it a shot.

EDIT: I tilted the fridge over after I got it running again, compressor stalled as it got a sip of oil. Bit of persuasion seems to have got it to push the oil out the discharge and it's running again. Now I just hope that whatever was in there stalling it doesn't end up blocking the capillary tube.

EDIT: Well damn, seems this compressor is more annoying than I expected. May have to just leave it on it's side and try to start it a few times. I can't imagine the oil is going to do much to the rest of the system but it's the last chance it has. Really need to flush whatever it is in there out into the filter(?)/dryer.

EDIT: Yup, don't try that at home kiddies. Blew the gasket on the compressor trying to do that and embedded the broken off piece of valve well and truly into the piston.

Queensland floods

The internets came back today, after going out yesterday, and first thing I see on Facebook is people bitching and carrying on about how their phones are out or the internet is finally back. Or about how they didn't get any warning.

The way I see it is that: floods are made of water. Water and technology generally don't mix. If our society was smart enough, anyone with half a brain would be able to realise that the floods are likely to cause damage. The fact that Telstra managed to restore connectivity to the backbone(s) that were damaged in such a small timeframe is amazing.

Really, what is so bad about being without these services for a day or more anyway? A few decades ago these technologies were barely known. Take a moment to consider the amount of work and people who have spent their lives getting us to where we are today.

Thumbs up Telstra, and thumbs down general population of people who can't think for themselves.

Stop bitching and find something else to do.

/rant

End o' holidays

Meep. I've got about 6 days left of the school holidays, before starting Grade 12. What a fun time this is...

On the topic of all my projects, I seem to be looking at them all the wrong way, and seemingly ending them without any real results. The only actual project I'm working on at the moment is the biodigester, and it feels like that's not going to get very far anyway, without a great use or anything it'll end up just sitting and fading to nothing like all my other projects. Ah well, if you're reading this because it mentioned biodigester, good luck, hope you have a good use for it in mind.

What a fun post this was, ah well. I'm in that kind of mood.

Holiday update 2

Well, as talking to other people about wind power, it seems that's just not the best thing if it can't be above the house. That's one project down...

The next thing to spark my imagination, which is reachable are biodigesters. Thought being that I have a reasonable amount of grass, which when digested produces a reasonable amount of methane. Cheap solar power, in a way. That's my next project, so far I've almost completed a small digester based upon a 20L bucket, not sure how long it will last, or if the bacteria will grow without cow or horse poop to start it... Will be an interesting few weeks seeing what is produced, if successful I will probably put together another post on it. Future ideas are to scrub it of H2S and CO2, and possibly compress/store it to run a generator. Those are pipe dreams at the moment though.

Cheers for the read, if you have any suggestions or questions or want to remind me of this, please post a comment below. They are now able to be posted anonymously, which hopefully doesn't bring in much spam.