The Cleanest Button

I don't like buttons. Here's why:

• Zippers are stronger.
• Zippers are easier to undo quickly.
• "Buttons" is a bad cat name.
• It's also a bad pop song.
• I was at war with a button today without knowing it.

Let me explain.

On Christmas morning there was a lot of laundry to do so after opening our presents we put a load on. It was an uneventful load until the middle of the spin cycle when a horribly loud, high-pitched scraping sound filled the house. Luckily the spin cycle was almost over so we pulled the still-wet clothes from the washing machine and started drying them while I had haunting visions of Boxing Day shopping for a washer/dryer combo.

The next day I woke up and remembered the washing machine. I was determined that I was not going to let some problem get the best of me without at least trying to diagnose what caused it. So, after visiting whirlpoolparts.ca and printing the complete exploded parts diagrams for our model I grabbed my tools and started dismantling the washing machine. At first it was a tough puzzle: the dryer hose was in such an inaccessible location that I couldn't figure out how it was installed. The side panel had one screw that was in an impossible-to-access location. The top seemed to not have any accessible screws. All problems had easy solutions that I only discovered after devising my own inferior approaches. The dryer hose was easily reachable after opening the large service panel. The side panel screw was in-your-face accessible after removing the front panel. The top was held on by two giant retaining clips.

Once I had the panels all off I found the three bolts holding the motor, gearbox, clutch and water pump (sounds like a car, doesn't it?). Armed with my socket set I removed the three bolts and everything came apart. I removed the basket and carried the motor et al. out to the garage for some serious surgery. At this point the machine looked like a floating dryer with a supporting frame below.

In the garage I was pleasantly surprised to find the whole assembly was held together with just retaining clips. I removed two and the gearbox fell off. I removed two more and the water pump fell off. I spun the motor's shaft and it felt like a brand new motor. I turned the gearbox and it turned with ease. Neither made a sound so I moved on to the water pump. I couldn't grip it to turn so I pushed it back on the motor and spun the motor in reverse. The unit spun and then I heard a snapping sound and a rather large black piece came out of the water pump. Great, I thought I had broken the water pump. However, looking closer at the piece that came out changed everything. It was a button, and it had scuff marks on it where it was scraping against the impeller. Holy crap, I had fixed the washing machine.

After announcing this most excellent discovery to Lori I proceeded to re-assemble the motor, gearbox and water pump and put the machine back together, this time making full use of the proper assembly procedures I had discovered during the disassembly. I took some time to clean everything as there was a considerable amount of "washer gunk" that built up over the years. Everything went back together and when I started it up it ran perfectly with no horrible sound.

I asked Lori about the button and she remembered it had come off a jacket she washed a couple days ago. I'm surprised it took that long to cause a problem.