Do-It-Yourself Story

I saw a tube video of a guy that replaces the boot without taking any of the washer apart. The boot was no problem, I had the old one off and the new one on in 20 minutes... The rear wire/spring clamp I found impossible to do. the spring is so hard to stretch. I tried till both of my thumbs were bleeding from the pressure. So I took off the top control panel, had access to the top of where the boot clamp groove is. I took one end of the wire off the spring, lubed it up with dish soap, put it around the bottom and sides and stretched the spring enough holding the end of the spring with one side of small needle nose pliers and vice grips on the wire part. It literally took all my strength to stretch that spring about an inch and a half to connect to the wire. Rear clamp done. The front wire clamp was just as hard, so I took the old rear clamp which was longer and made a new front wire clamp that I only had to stretch the spring about an inch. Bosch has those springs ridiculously tight.