The LG 'WD 1460 FD' washing machine

In september of 2001 we bought a new washing machine: an LG WD 1460 FD machine with the following properties:

It has served us well, with many washing runs per week. Two girls in the house means lots of one-day clothes which ultimately end up in the laundry bin before they get the chance to accumulate dirt. Plus the laundry from my mom and in the summer also the laundry from the boat trips (lots of towels for drying the equipment).


The LG stopped being reliable

Three days ago the machine started to behave erratically. It would run as expected, but stop 5 minutes prior to program end. With the wash nearly dry, it opened the water inlet valve for half a second, did some pumping and slow drum movements and then decided to repeat this same series of operations indefinitely.

When the machine was stopped (power down), restarted and a separate spin-cycle was started, it finished the program as usual. This is strange. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That almost rules out a software problem. Still, the stories on the internet all told that this problem was not uncommon and was solved by replacing the controller board.


Contact the LG service desks

I called the national LG service desk. They pointed me to the regional repair centre: Service centrale Van Vugt in Oosterhout. The man on the phone attentively listened to my story and then told me I was wrong. It most probably was a clogged rubber tube between the soap container and the drainsystem. He gave instructions how to check this and I went down the stairs to the garage where the LG lives.


Fixing the machine

You start by opening the cover of the machine. You need to do so for just about any repair or inspection. Opening is easy: just clear the junk from the top, remove the two screws from the back and slide the top backwards for 2 cm. The top can now be lifted off easily.

What you see now, is a very tidy machine compartment. There are four rubber tubes ending in the soap compartment. You need to check the one of the left, closest to the side wall of the machine.

In the picture on the right, it's the topmost tube. The thin one, marked "2".

Carefully pull it off, first at the soapbox, then at the inverted U joint (marked "1") near the backside wall. Clean the tube and blow through it. If in doubt, use a 5 mm rod to clean the tube. Then use a running tap to rinse it clean with water.
After you have ensured that the tube is clear, remount it to the inverted U and put the other end between your lips. Blow on the tube. If you cannot blow through it, the inverted U section is clogged. Use a piece of thin wire or a needle to open the pinhole inside the white plastic tube that mates with the rubber tube. The best method however is to blow the dirt out.

When done, remount the rubber tube and make sure it is in the original position. The machine has performed several washing jobs since the repair, without any problems. After two weeks, the problem returned. It was fixed again by blowing on the tube. Re-occurence dates:

I guess it will be time for disassembling the effluent system to find out why the tube gets clogged.


Spring 2008

End of May, 2008, the machine refused again. This time it was lasting. Blowing the hose did not do the trick. So I pulled the machine from the wall for a closer inspection. There was a kind of black debris in the tubes, the pants and the exhaust of the sewerpipe.

Time for a spring cleaning!

Now all works fine again. In the hoses there was some kind of gel. Probably emulgated dirt and soap. Caused by years of low temperature washing. The solution is to have at least once a week a hot wash (90+ °C) to flush the machine clean. Which also happens to be the advice of Miele: too much laundrying on too low temperatures too much emulgated dirt is stacked up in the internals of the machines. Causing hard to diagnose failures.


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