Whirlpool WP91939 Upper Transmission Shaft Seal OEM Part

First, DO NOT call Sears for parts, their call center knows nothing about the product. App-Pros are the best for help and the right parts. I figured to repair, replace all seals and any item that shows need to and all items that have to do with the spin that may be bad. Repair videos great help. I will start from the "bottom" up, the repairs were not done in this order, just a list of what I did and notes. Replaced-- motor drive coupling, (checked out transmission ok), thrust washer, clutch ass'y, (brake ok), thrust washer, transmission shaft sleeve bearings (inside the spin tube), grease seals, and topwater seal. Replaced sleeve bearings, grease seals, topwater seal for spin tube in (sorry, name?) (main tube housing?). Replaced tub seal (it was real bad), drive block (was bad) agitator washer, agitator dogs (were broken), dog retainer washer. In hindsight, I don't think it was needed to replace the bearings, but beings I bought them went ahead and did it. That was the hard part and I used some "weird" solutions. After trying to remove transmission shaft bearings with a puller, etc, I removed the old grease seals and pounded the old bearings deeper into the tube, there is plenty of room, and they pounded the new bearings in. So now in effect, there are four bearings installed. For the spin tube bearings, I could not find the part number and/or info on the upper bearing. The lower bottom bearing is brass with a lip on it (grove cut in the lip is for the retainer ring for the brake). I bought two of them, cut the lip off one, and pounded it in from the bottom up to close to the old one in the top of the tube. So now there are two upper bearings. Then I put in the lower one with the lip. Be careful with this one, brass is easy to damage. Without doing the bearings, repairs were easy, they made it hard to do. The trans shaft and spin tube water seals are easily damaged when installed. For the spin tube seal, I found a one-inch pipe coupling that was a perfect fit, I ground off the threads in a taper that would clear the seal lip and just fit on the rubber-covered metal base and pounded it in. For the trans shaft, I found an old shower curtain rod was a perfect fit to drive in the seal. The wife is happy with her 25 year old "new" machine, it works great. You can hardly feel anything when it spins. :-)

In reality, this turned into a full-on rebuild project - with several parts orders, not just a simple repair. But I have to give credit: The parts listings with pictures on the AppliancePartsPros web site were really useful in figuring out what was going on inside the machine, and what parts I would need. Also: The repair videos were critical for me to be able to ensure I was reassembling everything correctly. Shout out to Simon, who was featured in several of the repair videos. His "gorgeous wooden box" and his habit of setting a part aside "where the kids won't play with it" are really humorous late at night, when I'm trying to get things back together! This was a challenging repair - largely because my washer is 25 years old. But the reputation of the Whirlpool direct drive design convinced me it was worth the effort to bring it back to life. Getting the tub nut and block apart without damage is difficult on old machines.

Just like the one's I have worked on for 30 years for Whirlpool.

Originally bought an off brand clutch from another site. Not sure if it was a bad part or bad install. It started leaking water a few months later and making a scratching noise. This time I ordered original parts from appliance parts pros: clutch and shaft/tub seals. The "how to" videos were extremely helpful. Now it runs quiet and dry. P.S. I tried using channel locks to remove the tub nut but ended up having to get the proper spanner wrench.

We initially thought the issue was the gasket at the base of the tub, but that ended up being okay. We replaced it just in case. In order to even get the agitator off, we had to drill through the agitator bolt. The thing had completely rusted through. inside that basket drive rod we could see that the seals were in poor shape, and the liquid sprayed at the top of the shaft was getting through. We assume this was how the water was getting dirty. We replaced both shaft seals (which meant also replacing the oil in the transmission), the upper transmission shaft seal, the tub gasket (just in case), and the agitator bolt we had to drill through. I recommend buying several of the shaft seals and upper transmission shaft seals- the fit is tight and they're very easy to damage. Double-check the shaft before you try to put them in too- our shaft had some damage and the gouges inside the shaft were keeping the seals from seating properly. We were able to use a razor blade to scrap it clean enough to go in.