Sears 'Kenmore', Frigidaire
Unsuitable (aluminium) components in Front Load Washers

POTENTIAL BUYERS BEWARE
(Current owners tough luck)

Some of these front load machines have aluminium (Al) spiders connecting the spin drum to the drive pulley.
Aluminium is corroded by, amongst other things, sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) otherwise known as bleach, Sodium carbonate, Sodium percarbonate, (these later two I found listed on the contents of a popular laundry aid), sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) (this one is sometimes used as a stabiliser in bleach but I did not find it listed on the two containers of bleach I found in our house).

To demonstrate what bleach can do to aluminium just find a piece of scrap aluminium, without any coating, or remove the coating and let it sit in air for a couple of days to develop the naturally occurring oxide coating, then put one drop of bleach, straight from the bottle, onto the aluminium and leave it overnight. The following morning you should have a nice little pile of corrosion products on your aluminium. This is what can happen to aluminium components in your washer, albeit at a much slower rate because the bleach should, initially, be diluted.

To check if any of your laundry products are harmful to aluminium perform an Internet search for the material safety data sheet for the chemical concerned (e.G. Sodium Hydroxide Material Safety Data Sheet) and read the sheet, you can skip the first aid and fire fighting bits.

I know these spiders are fitted to some Kenmore (manufactured by Frigidaire) machines, some Frigidaire machines sold under their own name, and some GE machines, there could well be many others.

This information has been passed to Sears and Frigidaire.
Sears advise that the information will be passed to the appropriate departments but have refused to pass any further information on to us.
Frigidaire have assured us that they use only the best quality materials and that they will pass on the information to their design engineers, the very people who would have specified aluminium in the first place. Hardly re-assuring.

To further find out what could happen to your washer perform the internet search "Why Kenmore Front Load Washers Fail' and watch the video. Whilst I agree that galvanic corrosion may play a small part in the corrosion problem I do not agree that it is between the stainless steel drum and the aluminium spider but between the steel shaft cast into the spider and the aluminium of the spider.

Company: Sears 'Kenmore', Frigidaire
Country: USA
Site: sears.ca

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