Whirlpool W10804664 Washer Motor Start Capacitor OEM Part

My Mom's Kenmore had a burnt plastic smell after a thunderstorm. Found motor capacitor had melted through, dumping liquid platic "spaghetti" onto the insulation blanket under the washer. All other compents looked fine. Told her not to use it until I replaced capacitor. The washer is 4 yrs old but the new capacitor revision was 3 letters higher, so they've made some design changes. Externally it looks the same. There is a large number on the capacitor, but the part is ordered by the much smaller drawing number on the label. The only tricky part is placing the washer into calibration mode after changing the capacitor. The instructions are provided, but you have to pause briefly at each stop to trigger the calibration mode. It took several tries to get it right, but it does work.

Luckily I was home at the time to keep my home from burning down as when this capacitor let go of the grass it didn't trip the breaker for some reason. Just started a load in the Whirlpool Cabrio washer about 3-4 years old and went to the other end of the house and began smelling a wierd smell about 5 minutes later. Went to investigate and saw smoke bellowing from the top load door area. Pulled the washer out, after unhooking everything from the wall and tipped it forward to see underneath and felt the motor was very hot and didn't initially see the capacitor was blown. Plugged it back in and turned it back on and laid back down on the floor to see what was smoking and saw the capacitor jetting out "something" along with smoke and immediately turned back off. Took off the motor guard (5/16" nut driver I think...two of them) and then 1 more for the capacitor along with the connector and came online to order. Ordered on Saturday around 2-3pm EST and arrived on Tuesday the following day. Screwed the new one down with the one screw after plugging in and put the belt/motor guard back on with the two remaining screws, plugged it in and ran the calibration (which took me about 4-5 times to get it to work right so don't give up on it...just kind of finniky...but it worked) and I was back up and running in about 30 minutes total including initial diagnostics of the problem to begin with.

Replaced the capacitor with a new one.

I ordered a new capacitor from AppliancePartsPros.com to replace the old one. The old one had melted and had a smell of burnt plastic with a little bit of smoke. It was something dreadful... But I replaced it with this new capacitor which appears to be made of metal, not plastic... I connected everything up, and gave it a few minutes to charge up the capacitor and then turned on the washing machine and it began to work again. Best $30 I spent. :) Sure beats spending $700 for a new washer.

Changing the start cap