Do-It-Yourself Story

At first the washer started by randomly stopping and displaying 'uL' code to which we redistributed the load several times in order to finish the wash. Eventually the washer also started spinning eratically and made very loud almost hyper sonic jet noises. We noticed a few times there was some water leakage underneath. All along it continued to stop and display 'uL'. Loud spinning noises now would include banging sounds and then it would just stop and display 'F51'. We tried to manually make the tub spin and even had to turn off the cycle and put in on 'Rinse and Spin' only to finish the wash until one time it smelled like something was burning. At this point the tub wouldn't spin at all. Ran a diagnostic test and only got to the C0 and C1 steps because the tub wouldn't move at all. The diagnostic codes displayed at the end were 'F71', 'F41' and 'F51'. A local appliance repairman came and confirmed the diagnostic codes and told us we needed to replace the "Outer Tub and Bearing Assembly" (part # PS3501622) and it would cost us $550 dollars which broke down to $350 for the parts and $200 for labor! He basically told us we were better off buying a brand new washer. Disappointed with the news I decided to look online and found several people had similar problems and they repaired the washer themselves just by purchasing the parts needed. Originally, I went directly to the Maytag site but they were very expensive! Then I found AppliancePartsPros.com and I got the same part for a much more reasonable price. The part was delivered in 2 days and it took my husband about 2 1/2 hours to replace it. Very happy we were able to repair our washer for under $200!