Do-It-Yourself Story

Found small metal gear pieces in the grease left over by an authorized Kitchen Aid Repair Shop in Michigan. The mixer had been professionally repaired previously for a gearbox issue. The repair shop replaced failed gears but did not replace the OEM grease which contained pieces of the original failed gears. The "clunking" sound was from left over metal gear pieces getting caught in the teeth of the new replacement gears. Unfortunately this caused extra stress on the OEM resin gearbox housing cover, resulting in failure of the transmission housing cover as well. The replacement cover has been redesigned and is now an aluminum casting, much stronger than the OEM resin housing cover. The repair consisted of a complete cleaning of the gearbox, replacement of the damaged worm and worm follower gears, repacking the gearbox with new planetary grease and replacing the failed transmission housing cover. Very much surprised and happy to find the replacement parts from AppliancePartsPros. Kudos AppliancePartsPros and Whirlpool! Lesson for all: Never re-use existing gear grease when making repairs to a gearbox!