My apartment is furnished with a GE stacked washing machine (Model No. WSM2420SEZWW). Over the past month it has been periodically getting black grease-like stains on my clothes. Sometimes this will occur on back-to-back wash cycles and sometimes it will go several cycles and work properly before doing it again. The substance has a sticky consistency similar to grease or shoe polish. When this first occurred I thought that I must have had something on my clothes or left something in my pockets. I have checked my clothes as thoroughly as I know how since then and the problem still occurs. My landlady has inquired with a local repair man as well as a Lowe?s employee about the problem. The repair man, which she found therefore I have no idea of his experience or track record, has stated that he sees no way for any grease-like substance to enter the wash drum from the mechanical parts of the machine. The Lowe?s employee stated a similar conclusion, without looking at the machine, and suggested running a hot water cycle with lemon juice to supposedly break loose any compacted detergent or residue. She supposedly followed this suggestion while I was out of town. Upon my return I washed approximately 5 loads of clothes and the problem occurred again worse than ever before. I personally do not see how this could be the problem as I use liquid detergent. Furthermore, my parents have used their washing machine for nearly 10 years with periodic use of powdered detergent and have never experienced such a problem from so called ?detergent build-up.? I have seen several articles on FixYa that have addressed similar problems but none of the instances occurred in a stacked washer/dryer unit similar to mine. I would appreciate any input that would support the notion that the grease-like stains are a result of a mechanical problem. If this is not a mechanical problem I would also appreciate any input that would support the above mentioned solutions as I have little faith in them at this point. This washing machine is slowly ruining every article of clothing I own and I would appreciate any advice you may have to help me resolve this problem. I have no knowledge of washing machines and how they work and I hope this inquiry will give me some support to convince my landlady that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.
Archit, the problem is located underneath the agitator. If you can imagine the plastic agitator not being there, you'd see a metal shaft sticking up through the bottom of the tub. This shaft comes out of the transmission and pokes through a couple of bearings and seals. These bearings are permanently (supposedly) sealed. When they fail, the lubrication (grease) inside them will show up on your laundry. After a while the black smudges will disappear altogether! This is not good. This means there is no more lube in the bearing and it will begin to wear at an extremely fast rate. It will rust through, it will leak and it will start "howling" loudly when the unit is in "spin". If the unit is less than 5 years old it will be a warranty issue through GE. The drive train has a 5 year warranty. Call 1-800-GE-CARES for their customer service line (have model and serial number ready) You haven't lost your mind, this is not uncommon.
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SolutionGuy, thank you very much for lending your time and expertise. Your diagnosis makes a lot of sense and supports my theory that the washing machine does have issues. I presented this information to my landlady this afternoon and she has already contacted a repair man to pursue this issue. Again, thank you for your time and take care.
Are you sure the problem is occurring in the washer? I have the same problem but the grease stains occur in the dryer and on a couple of occasions I have found items wedged between the front edge of the drum and whatever it sits in/around, when I pull the wedged item out it has grease on it, and sometimes other items have grease stains on them probably from being wedged in there as well but then freeing themselves as the dryer spins. I haven't looked into what is allowing things to get jammed in that gap in the first place, or whether there should be a gap there at all.
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