Shock absorbers for washing machines: how to choose and replace

Shock absorbers for wash­ing machines are an impor­tant detail nec­es­sary to soft­en the vibra­tions of the drum dur­ing wash­ing. They are placed under the drum and, like shock absorbers in a car, damp­en vibra­tion.

Like oth­er parts, shock absorbers can wear out over time, per­form their func­tions worse, as a result of which there will be strong vibra­tion and a char­ac­ter­is­tic knock from the fact that the drum dan­gles and hits the walls of the wash­ing machine. If this part is not replaced in time, the hatch cuff, springs and bear­ings will wear out faster, and soon the machine will need to be repaired.

Shock absorber device

There are two types of depre­ci­a­tion for wash­ing machines:

1. The clas­sic type shock absorber is installed under the drum in wash­ing machines of the past gen­er­a­tion. This is the cylin­der that hous­es the pis­ton and the spring that returns it.
2. Dampers are a more mod­ern option. They do not have return springs; instead, a drum is sus­pend­ed on the springs.

Most often, lin­ers or gas­kets are sub­ject to wear, which are designed to give the part elas­tic­i­ty. The cylin­der itself often also wears out — in this case it is no longer sub­ject to repair.

If the cylin­der was not dam­aged, but only began to per­form its func­tion worse, then in order to repair it, it will be enough to replace the gas­ket and lin­ers. For dampers, repair kits and indi­vid­ual spare parts are not sold, so their repair is not pos­si­ble. There is only one way out — to replace the entire shock absorber. It’s easy to do it your­self.

More com­plex break­downs also occur: for exam­ple, the shock absorber is bent or even bro­ken into pieces. Because of this, the drum will con­stant­ly beat against the walls of the wash­ing machine, due to which the belt will fly off the engine, which will require more seri­ous repairs than a sim­ple replace­ment of the ele­ment.

Removing and inspecting shock absorbers

Before repair­ing or replac­ing non-work­ing shock absorbers, you must first make sure that the prob­lem is real­ly in them, because knock­ing in the drum may indi­cate anoth­er rea­son. To do this, you need to remove them from the wash­ing machine. Some­times you can do this from the bot­tom of the car, lay­ing it on its side. But in many mod­els there is a more com­plex device: it may be nec­es­sary to remove the back or front wall. The rear wall of the machine can be removed with­out much effort, just unscrew the bolts. But the front wall is more dif­fi­cult to remove, you will have to per­form sev­er­al oper­a­tions.

1. After unscrew­ing the bolts locat­ed at the rear of the machine, slide the top cov­er of the machine back and remove.
2. Remove the deter­gent draw­er and remove the pan­el above the drain fil­ter.
3. Remove the con­trol pan­el by unscrew­ing the mount­ing bolts.
4. Remove cuff. To do this, pry off the clamp with a screw­driv­er, where it con­nects to the cuff, and remove it, and then remove the cuff.
5. Now you can unscrew the bolts secur­ing the front wall of the machine.
6. Remove the wall from the hook, but the wires in the door lock can get in the way. To fix this prob­lem, you can either unscrew the entire lock, or care­ful­ly pull out the wires.

The dampers are now open. Unscrew the low­er bolt that con­nects the shock absorber to the body, and try to com­press and then unclench the damper with your hands. If it is cor­rect, the move will be tight. And if it is pos­si­ble to squeeze and return back with­out effort, then the parts need to be replaced or repaired.

Replacing shock absorbers

To replace shock absorbers with your own hands, you must fol­low the fol­low­ing steps.

1. As in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, remove the front or back wall to pro­vide access to the required part.
2. Unscrew the bot­tom bolt that secures the part to the body or remove the plas­tic pin.
3. Dis­con­nect the shock absorber from the drum in the same way.
4. Now you can remove the spare part and replace it by repeat­ing all the steps described in reverse order.

Although the design of many wash­ing machines is sim­i­lar, shock absorbers that are designed for one mod­el may not be suit­able for repair­ing anoth­er. There­fore, for replace­ment, it is more reli­able to pur­chase arti­cles that are used by the man­u­fac­tur­er of your par­tic­u­lar mod­el of wash­ing machine. And you can pick up cheap­er non-orig­i­nal options, but first con­sult with knowl­edge­able peo­ple.

Wear prevention

In order for your wash­ing machine shock absorbers to serve for a long time with­out need­ing repair, fol­low a few sim­ple rules:

• place the machine only on a flat, hor­i­zon­tal hard sur­face,
• do not load more items into the drum than the rec­om­mend­ed weight,
• make sure that no for­eign objects get into the drum,
• treat your wash­ing machine with care, lis­ten to extra­ne­ous nois­es in the drum, respond in time to all pos­si­ble mal­func­tions, and car­ry out the nec­es­sary repairs.

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