Bent Spindle

[Mike Donahue]

Hi.   The bearings on my He3T washer clearly had gone bad, so I ordered a new bearing and seal set from you guys.   I got through the process of disassembling my HE3T washer, and finally got to the difficult step of getting the inner tub spindle out of the bearings in the rear outer tub.   I initially tried the drop technique described in your videos.  After a few tries with no luck, I tried putting the tub on it's side, and hitting the end of the shaft (with the nut in place) with a 2lb hammer.   After a few more tries, and some penetrating oil, I returned to the drop technique, and it finally came apart!   There was actually nothing left of the outer bearing except the races.   What was left of all the balls and bearing retainers had fallen out!

So, the bad news is that I think I may have bent the end of the spindle shaft.   When I slide the pulley onto the shaft, and begin to screw the nut on, it's clearly not parallel with the pulley, and will go on completely, so some of the threads may be ruined.  I think the fact that I'd only put the nut on about 2/3 of the way during the pounding may have contributed to this.

Any tricks to salvage this?   I doubt it.   If I want to salvage the washer, it looks like I'd need to replace the inner basket and spider/spindle assembly.   This part may not even be available any more for this 18 year old machine!  The few out of stock parts listed on some sites show it to be over $400, which is way more than I'd want to put into this machine.

Thanks,

Mike

[Mike Donahue]

Well, it turns out I was able to salvage those bad threads at the end of the spindle shaft.  Figuring I had nothing to loose, I put the nut on as far as it would go hand-tight, eyeballed which way it was cocked, and hit the nut a few times on the opposite side.   It seemed a bit straighter after that.   Then, I decided to get out my 24" breaker bar and power through the compromised threads.   After working the nut 100% down onto the shaft, it appeared perfectly straight!  I popped the pulley onto the end, and tightened the nut all the way down, and it appeared to seat perfectly against the pulley!

Unfortunately, that was just round-1.   The second issue was that the larger inner tub bearing was actually stuck on the spindle.  Rather than the shaft coming out and the bearing staying seated in the tub, the entire bearing unseated during the pounding/dropping process, and remained stuck on the shaft.  Since this bearing is so close to the end of the shaft where it meets the spider, there was very little room to get any sort of a tool in to pound it off.   It probably took over an hour, but I finally got the bearing off the shaft.   It involved a small pry bar, with a hammer and a piece of wood against the spider, lots of penetrating oil, and eventually a torch!

The surface of the shaft was quite a bit worse for wear, so much that the new bearing would not slide into place.   I took some emery cloth and cleaned up the surface best I could, until the bearing finally slid on and seated.   The problem now was that the fit of the new bearing on the shaft is actually A BIT LOOSE!  It didn't seem like much just rocking the bearing back and forth on the shaft, but when I finally assembled the bearings into the outer tub and slid the outer tub onto the spindle, there is a significant bit of play from side to side.  It's perhaps 1/8" of play between the outer edge of the inner and outer tubs.   I'm not sure how bad this will be when the tub does it's spin cycle.   Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to re-assemble the 100 or so items required to get the machine up and running!

In the ideal world, I'd consider replacing the whole spindle and spider, if it were available, and the cost was not prohibitive.  However, I can't seem to find such a part, and the $400+ inner basket assembly is not even available any more.

So, my choices seem to be:

1) Cross my fingers and hope that the play in the shaft is not as bad as I think (and I get a few more years out of the machine).
2) Hunt for a replacement spindle/spider that's reasonably priced.
3) Do something crazy like J-B weld the bearing to the shaft.  This would have to be a blind assembly, and would be right next to the seal, and would be permanent!
4) Don't put another minute into re-assembly, and just carry all the parts out to the curb!

Thanks for listening to my saga!
Mike

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[Carol Curtin]

Mike, It sounds like you are very determined. Please be sure to let us know which one you chose and how it worked out.

[Mike Donahue]

FYI, based on some research of past threads on this forum, and general discussions on this sort of issue, I decided that I would try filling the worn area of the shaft with J-B Weld.

Here's what the shaft looked like prior to filling.   You can see the necked-down area where the larger inner bearing sat.  Actually,  it was the smaller outer bearing that completely self-destructed  (all the balls were ground down and fell out).  I believe what happened was that once that bearing had a very large amount of play, the inner bearing was torqued on the shaft, causing all those dings, and it had probably started to spin on the shaft as well.

I used a thin coat of the "original" J-B Weld (the slow cure version) and waited about 24 hours before sanding it down.  Here's the initial coating:

I sanded it down with progressively finer emery paper, and kept test-fitting the bearing.  I attempted to be as uniform as possible, to keep the fill area as round as possible, and in-line with the rest of the shaft.  I suppose if I had a full machine shop, and I could have gotten the shaft removed from the spider, this would ideally done on a lathe, but this was not the ideal world!

After sanding, the bearing fit pretty well, but there was a tiny bit of play in one axis, but very snug in the axis 90 deg. around from this. 

Since I knew the J-B weld would never be as strong as the original shaft, I didn't want any movement of the bearing on the shaft that would allow it to start tearing into the fill, so I decided I'd make this repair permanent, and put a final very thin coat of J-B weld on the shaft during "final assembly", and cross my fingers!  I wanted just enough so that the excess would not ooze out onto the seal, or into the bearing, and focusing on the area that seemed to have the most play.

I carefully re-assembled the inner and outer tubs, popped on the pully, tightened the nut, and let it sit as balanced as possible while the epoxy cured.

After re-assembly of the washer, and a few test runs, I was pleasantly surprised that the repair seems to have worked, at least for now!   There is definitely some imbalance in the tub, but not too bad.   It's not until the "finale" at the end of the spin cycle when the highest RPM is reached, that I notice some significant vibration.  That's really only for about 30 seconds or so, so we can live with that (if the washer can).    I've been through about 5 - 10 loads of wash at this point, and the bearings still feel snug, best I can tell!   I doubt I'll get another 18 years out of it, but maybe a few more.

Mike

[Doriane Marshall]

Mike, this is great!  Thanks for sharing your step by step process!

Doriane