so i'm making the youtube video i wanted
to find about 12 hours ago when the wife
yelled out from the hall that the
washing machine wouldn't start and we
couldn't do any of our laundry on this
lovely sunday this is uh the door latch
and lock assembly uh you can see this
this is on the door and it goes
it goes into here like this
and that um
this is a door latch assembly from a
frigidaire frfw 3700 lwo it was an
inexpensive unit of the time we didn't
buy it because it was cheap but but
because it was the only one that didn't
look like a spaceship with a huge
bulbous front so it fit in our
cabinet better but they also use these
on electrolux electrics makes frigidaire
white westinghouse crosley gibson ge uh
this one is number one three one part
number one three one seven six three two
but you probably know that if you found
this video
uh um also one three one seven six three
two five six and one three one seven six
three three ten i will put all that in
the description you can see it has a
little schematic on it which is actually
uh correct well as far as it goes so
that was some of the first clues i
wanted to know how the thing actually
worked there are a lot of videos on
youtube
about how to
replace these things but not a lot on
how to diagnose them to see whether you
should replace them or even how to
hotwire your machine to
run without this installed at all with
all the safety stuff uh disabled so i'm
going to tell you how to do all that now
i've shot the other parts of this so i
know what's coming up um we're going to
i'm going to describe the circuitry in
here quickly and how this thing operates
then i'll show you how to hot wire your
your door so the machine will run
without this even installed and then
we'll open it up and take a look inside
you'll get a real good feeling i hope
for how the thing
actually works so
as i say this has to do three things it
has to tell
the washing machine the main board in
the washing machine and you want to
diagnose this because if this is working
then your your control board and the
washing machine is bad you just might as
well throw out the washing machine
because the control boards are so
expensive to get
generally this is the problem there is
one video on youtube on how to diagnose
this this is called the wax motor and
we'll talk about it a little bit but
that's only one part of the things that
can go wrong here so i'm hoping if you
have a complete understanding of how all
this works uh you'll be able to kind of
do your own diagnosis and make some
intelligent decisions
so yeah you go and you try to figure out
what's i search for the part number and
i'm trying to get a schematic and of
course all the schematics and service
manuals are locked up people want money
for them there's all this sort of rent
seeking
behavior
it's all proprietary stuff i mean it's
really
frustrating for you know stuff that
should be
readily available like right so that's
why i'm a big proponent of the kind of
right to repair laws anyway the only
thing i found was this and it's almost
unreadable when you even even a smaller
size it was almost uh unreadable but
this is a
schematic of the inside of the of the
door switch and
but this one only has three
four five connectors one two three four
five so it's not this one it may be an
earlier version of this one i have read
some youtube posts today from people who
had to do some elaborate wiring to
possibly convert from this kind to this
kind and i think that can be done i also
have seen from other videos that earlier
versions of this have a white wax motor
here and the red one it makes a later
one although as i say this one's 10
years old and the one that's coming 10
year olds it looks like it hasn't been
redesigned in the last
decade um
so
but this one did give me some clues as
far as wire colors are concerned
especially the notion that red black i
don't know if you can read that there is
a common wire
that comes in and goes to all of these
other
components inside the
the box so that was a clue
and then i just started uh
beeping things out and trying to analyze
here
and wound up doing
my own
kind of wiring diagram schematic
whatever you want to call it these are
the colors on mine i imagine they will
match yours but these are laid out the
way these this is laid out so
uh these two are these two black and
gray
then these four are these four
and then finally these two just on the
screen
these two on the wax motor are are down
here
so how does this work they say it has to
do three things it has to know that the
door is closed it has to lock the door
and it has to know that the
safety mechanism to keep the door locked
in case of a power failure until the
drum can spin down
is working
and again you're probably here because
either your machine didn't start or it
wouldn't go into high-speed spin
or it started to do you know it wouldn't
finish your rinse or it would stop in
the middle of a cycle so all those
things are generally a problem with this
uh device so i drew this out this
morning before i actually opened this up
but i did get it right this is correct
electrically and the wire colors turned
out to be right
um but unless you open this up and look
inside you don't really get a sense of
the sequence things have to happen but
we'll talk about that
as we go through it so the first thing
is all the black and reds are common
they're neutral
and so
they are all tied together effectively
if you
if you go to the machine and and probe
out the plug that goes into these on all
these ones that are assigned black red
black red you'll see they're all they're
all connected to each other they all
have continuity so you can use any of
these black reds as neutral why they
didn't just bring
one in like this older i guess version
did which would be cheaper i don't know
except i assume that if you connect an
individual neutral to each
component in the box it may be easier to
do troubleshooting or or something
um
but that is the way it is so all of
these are tied together and we can
effectively
sort of tie these and ignore them
and then the the kind of odd thing out
is the relay coil which is
right here
and i draw that
and
that is actually shown on the plastic
here this is uh
this relay coil
is here
uh this switch here is the door closed
switch it's this
this is the
this is this loop here which is the the
safety time delay
bar is closed we'll talk about that
and i guess that's i guess that's all
there is um
so the things you want to test right
away is you want to know uh
whether your wax motor is working and
whether your relay coil is working i
would start with the relay coil because
it's just so easy
this one's open i don't know what the
correct
value should be i expect it's going to
be a few ohms and tomorrow when i get
one that works i will measure it and
tell you
but you can put a multimeter between
here and here and you should get a low
resistance if you get an infinite
resistance then the coil is open and the
thing needs to be
replaced and then the other thing you
can check which is there's other youtube
videos from like that one parts guy from
like 2013 who says how to measure
measure the resistance on this uh to see
if it works so what is a wax motor let's
talk about that it is a um
it's essentially a little pellet of wax
that
gets heated up real hot turns to a
liquid and when wax phase changes from
solid to liquid it expands by 25 or 30
percent so it can be used to make kind
of a gentle hydraulic
ram in this case so
what you do is you feed 120 volts in
here this thing gets real hot a little
pellet of wax melts and a plastic
plunger slowly rises that keeps the
locking um
teeth
the locking fork i call it um closed so
that even if the power goes off when
you're in a high speed spin the door
won't open and it'll stay up
until
the
until the pellet cools and turns back
into
the solid and then this will slowly come
down in a non-linear fashion it's like
slow slow slow fast and heating up's the
same way it's kind of slow slow slow
when it gets really going like a lava
light or something you know and uh
uh so
if you don't get into high-speed spin
and stuff it's because
perhaps this hasn't extended all the way
and closed
these two contacts the orange contact in
red red red
black contact here
so
so there are kind of two ways you can
test this and and you can test the
switch as well so the first of course is
to measure the resistance of this to
make sure it has continuity and the
other youtube video was measuring
oh i don't know anything over a kilo ohm
and less than maybe two kiloohms is
probably going to be fine i think this
one is 1.3
um
youtube video said the parts guy's old
youtube video said that going up to like
1.7 is fine it may go down as low as 1
2. don't sweat it if it's between a k
and 2k uh you're probably fine and then
another way to test it is to actually
put 120 volts on this and if you feel it
right here it'll get real hot um and you
can test it and the
uh
this switch because as this as this wax
motor pushes this rod up it closes
it closes this these contacts here so
one thing you can do is put a beeper on
this and put 120 volts on this
and uh wait you know about a minute and
then this will beep in fact we can
actually do that hang on a second let me
get my beeper
okay so we're gonna we're gonna connect
to these these two
and uh this won't close all at once
because as as it goes up it the the the
switch contacts kind of bounce until
they make a full
uh contact so over here
i have
120 volts on some alligator clips
connected to an isolation transformer so
i don't hurt myself you be careful
and now we can turn on the power and
heat this up
and wait and if we wait a little bit
this should beep so see we all clears
everything
okay here we go
power on
i'll put the mic over by the multimeter
and now
current is coming out on that orange
wire so the control board knows that the
the plastic time delay plunger is in the
safely locked position let me turn the
electricity off now
and in fact i can
take these off of here because it
doesn't matter that's
that's warm not super hot but it's warm
and this will cool off now and go
through the reverse process as the
plunger starts falling back
and finally i'm a ham radio operator so
i always hear morse code as those those
things are opening as it's transitioning
there it's switching a full 120 volts uh
so i don't know how it seemed like the
contacts would get kind of beat up but
uh i
i guess there must not be too much
current
through there
uh otherwise everything will be super
pitted and that's that's fairly warm so
those are these are your two tests to
test the wax motor and see if this
plunger is going in closing uh this and
that's definitive if you can do that and
get the beep then your thing is working
a resistance test is probably good
enough but if you have a question about
it that's another thing you can do and
then of course check the relay coil
if you want to check the door close
switch
that's a little trickier
so let me
when you energize the relay it tries to
pull this
um
this this part of the switch down this
metal down to close this
but
there is a um well actually what happens
is you press the start button and it
tries to pull this down it goes
there's a little piece of plastic
in the way so that it can't come down
even if you know when the door even if
the door is closed and
when you insert
this into here
it swings this piece of plastic out of
the way so that when the relay is
energized um
it can close all the all the way and
suddenly um you have current on this
black
output
wire and you know the door is closed so
that does mean that the door closed wire
only becomes live when the relay is
energized so one test you could do is
put the beeper on
the
uh the two door closed contacts
which are these
and then insert
the key into the lock
and then put 120 volts on these other
ones but i would actually make up a
wiring harness with some lugs because
these are so close together and you
don't want to shock yourself so
but that would let you test the the
switch inside here
without actually having to open
this up and of course the other test you
can do is to de-energize the relay so
you can pull this out because when the
energize when the relay is energized
this is locked in
so you pull that out
and then energize the relay and this
should not beep because the door is not
in so it's a little tricky to test i
don't know whether i'd actually
bother with that but you know if you
want to test the other switch in here
that's a way to do it so that pretty
much lets you test everything in here
the wax motor the relay coil
the this switch and if you really want
to go for it this switch
so let's say you're out in the country
and you have to wait two weeks to get
one of these as a replacement
do
is it possible to hotwire the door to
bypass this entirely i mean you have to
install this as a dummy not connected
anything so there's a latch
to
hold the door shut but could you bypass
it well i did a little proof of concept
of this earlier today
and the answer is yes it is possible i'm
going to show that to you now
okay this is just a proof of concept on
how to hot wire your washing machine
here's ours here's where the the switch
latch usually goes for the door and then
there are the three buses this is the
one on top uh this is the four one in
the middle and then this is the one for
the wax motor at the bottom we're gonna
ignore that for now
and the basic idea is to trick the
machine into thinking that the door is
both closed and locked and if you do
this and it works and you can start your
washer then you know that
the problem is actually in your door
latch device i'm not suggesting that
this is the best way to diagnose that
we'll we'll look at how to trace out the
actual unit safely uh because this is
dangerous there's 120 volts on all this
stuff and uh so if you lack the
necessary skills to do this kind of work
you should definitely have a few drinks
first what i've done is just taken some
bus wire which is kind of like paper
clip wire it's a number 18 bare wire i
use it in radio work and jammed it into
the
plugs here and so what you see is all of
the red and blacks are common they're
neutral and you know
grounded conductor uh so i've jammed
this bus wire into one of the red and
blacks and this is serving as my common
and i put two jumper cables on that the
yellow one and the green one and the
yellow one goes over here to my very top
wire which is black and this is telling
the washer that the door is closed and
then this green one is coming over here
to the orange wire and that's passing
current to let the
washing machine know that the door is
locked so now the machine is completely
fooled and if you wanted to you could
build a thing to do this you know cable
tie it lash it up jam it behind the door
stick the stick the dummy uh unconnected
switch in here
and uh go ahead and run your
washing machine i think
certainly
uh this is not recommended because
all the safety stuff is defeated
you know if if you uh
uh if the power goes out you open the
door uh then the thing's still spinning
and you stick your hand in there and the
clothes wrap around your wrist and snap
it you know that's not good so um
so you know if you do any kind of
messing around like this please
uh be careful now we have ours let me
scoot this back
we have ours on a uh our washing machine
on a kaza uh smart plug because
it's in this little closet and getting
back into the corner is almost
impossible to
switch it on and off and sometimes it
gets flaky and you want a cycle of power
on it so i'm going to tell alexa now to
power up the unit alexa
turn washer on
okay there we are and now with these two
jumpers
the washing machine should believe that
the door is closed and locked so and
this wasn't working at all um earlier
today we couldn't even get it to start
so
and we'll turn that off right away
because i don't want to flood it with
water but there you go that's a proof of
concept how to hot wire your
front loading washing machine door
so there's latches here and here and i'm
trying to pry this apart with
some of these splooger sticks but i see
there's a
looks like a spring in here i can see
the relay coil too
which surprises me because it's kind of
naked yeah there's a seems to be a
spring holding
two halves together here so let me try
to
get in here with something
uh small
i can just
see that
spring right there
keeping tension maybe for some
electrical contact
can you come over there
there it goes
okay
the back came off pretty easy and now
that it's open we can really see how it
works this is the
the front side that you're all used to
and then now the the back
and uh if you'll remember uh um these
two are the relay coil and you can see
the relay coil
under there so when the relay energizes
it pulls this
this bar down i'm going to call this the
locking fork and i'll you'll see why in
a minute and uh yeah taking this spring
out was a mistake when i was opening it
i thought this was holding the case shut
but it really is the return spring for
the relay so it keeps it normally open
unless current is applied so when
current goes away the spring pulls it
open
and
and then the contact from here
to here is the door closed switch so
this comes in the
in the bottom and comes to this
this point way down here and then the
other side is this top piece of copper
to this braid that comes out here
and then these two connections um we'll
get to in a little bit but this tells it
that the safety time delay is is
operating so um
i have a beeper here because i was
beeping this out
so we'll go ahead and
put this on the door closed
switch and uh the problem with my
this is my broken one and the problem is
my relay coil is open and i'm hoping
that's why it was a failure and not just
me screwing around putting 110 volts
through the coil to test it today and
blowing it out you know like uh like a
fuse
because i notice on the harness the
washing machine is only putting 60 volts
on the relay coil i don't know if it
ever steps that up but uh
you know
there's a chance i i blew it up so i
gotta see when i get um
one tomorrow when the new one comes uh i
expect there to be some resistance
between these two i haven't measured any
resistance between this all day so i
really do think that was the the problem
anyway um
so
you'll notice
when the relay um pulls down
um
it wants to pull this
the the top of this uh door close switch
down onto the contact but it can't
because this plastic
rocker
is in the way
and ordinarily this is up against the
top of the case so as we play with this
i'm going to have to kind of hold it
into these u-shaped channels
but uh right now
see i can the relay can close
but
uh we're not hearing any kind of beep
from the from the multimeter because
again i got this
got this setup to beep
so
i hope you can hear that with this mic
um
the
uh so you press the start button and he
and the washing machine energizes the
relay but goes uh oh
i don't see the door closed
and in fact uh you cannot insert it now
uh you cannot close the door now with
the start button pressed because the
locking fork is down and what happens is
of course when you
when you put
this is the key from the door into the
into the lock here into the into the
latch
this top part the diamond shape part is
the business end that pushes these two
uh
metal plates apart in here when it goes
in you've probably
noticed this if you've been messing
around so these these get pushed
uh away from each other this bottom one
is just a guide this this doesn't do
anything except kind of funnel it and
keep it you know aligned in the proper
uh position as it as it goes in so
so you press the start button this comes
down and he says oh no there's no the
door is not closed
i can't i can't start or we can't daisy
chain to the next step of this thing
because you could wire this just by
daisy chaining
the relay to the
door closed to the
uh
heater here
and uh and then wait for this current to
come up on this
that's kind of the steps we're going to
go through
getting ahead of myself here
so let's see if i can explain this
clearly
so right now
if you're holding that start button down
the locking fork is going to be pulled
down by the relay and you cannot insert
the
the you cannot close the door now at all
even if you want to so you have to
cancel it when you cancel it
that pops up
and now you can in fact insert the the
latch into the
receiver and when that happens you'll
see this um
white plastic
shoe
is going to toggle backward and that
will allow this to
uh fall all the way to the contact when
the relay is energized so let me i'm
gonna hold the ends of this here to keep
it cause it's gonna go under pressure
i'm gonna close the door
or i can close the door
oh come on you
oh geez i lost my lost my beeper hang on
let's get that back on
hold that down
push this in it takes a lot of force
oops and i don't want to hold the
locking bar down there we go
so that was
that wasn't a very good demonstration
this but this thing has swung out of the
way now so if the relay energizes now
now you know the now you know the
the door is closed when the relay is
energized so now you can go on to the
next step if you're a washing machine
let me see if i can uh show that a
little
a little better because i didn't do that
very well let me yank it out
you see when i yank it out it
it's keeping that
keeping that up let's kind of
maybe do this this way let's see if we
can
get this in here
so you can see
there
i got a good
good shot there
now
and the locking forks are up so
come on
wait it's hard to get the lever oh i
didn't have it
it's going in the hole
okay there we go now we're on the hole
okay
see that okay
i hope so i wasn't looking at the
viewfinder but i think i think that was
a good
a good shot seeing this he's popping out
of the thing
so now the door is closed
and the relay's energized
and the next thing
that
is going to happen
is power is going to be applied to
this uh
wax motor
which will
um
heat up it gets pretty warm and until it
gets to a steady state and it will
change a pellet of wax from
uh solid to a liquid and that'll push
this
plastic this black plastic
um
i don't want to call it actuator cam up
up here
and what that will do
is
i don't know if you can see
i hope
there's too much
shade there
can you see this little
this little
tab there
that is on top of the locking bar so
when
this black plastic thing goes up it'll
keep the lock
locked
so then imagine the power goes out and
this is all the way up and this spring
would like to pull
uh
the locking fork up
and open the door closed
signal so the door closed signal is only
valid when the relay is energized that's
a fine point
but
this will have hooked that little
lip and we'll be keeping the locking
forks from coming up until this cools
off enough
that it drops
slowly back
uh all the way into this
and uh
uh when this is up these switches are
closed so this tells you that the um the
time delay um safety lock is is closed
and then this tells you that it's
finally open let me push that
oh god don't mess that up
gonna be okay there we go whoo
so uh
let me show you because i think it'll be
um fun so here we are uh our locking
fork is
down i am holding the the relay actuated
as though the coil were energized and
i'm going to put 110 volts here
on this i am not using the isolation
transformer because i'm an idiot so i
have to be careful and not shock myself
um
but we'll turn this on let's start
counting as
33 there all right so this takes a
little while it's gonna heat up
and you can feel it this does get pretty
warm
and then as it starts to move look at
the um
look at the contacts on this switch here
you can see they're slowly
slowly starting to come together and
there he goes it's it's really phase
changing now from a solid to a liquid
and expanding whatever it's 20.
25 30 percent
nice slow hydraulic action
and that's about it now this thing's
kind of
steady stating in there with whatever
the heater is i'm going to peel tt uh
let me
[Music]
turn the power off
and you'll notice it doesn't uh it's
okay so let's say there's a power
failure so power's off on this and i'm
gonna release the relay
but um
look the locking fork is still
in place so
because this is slowly cooling off and
slowly coming down and this is giving
the washing machine time to spin down
say it was in a high speed spin this is
why it won't go into a high speed spin
if uh if this isn't working and these
these contacts here aren't closed
these contacts here aren't closed
so it's still up but eventually now
this will
get my finger out of the way
this will open up enough
oh did it pop it popped it came up i
didn't even notice it
um
darn sometimes i usually get a good uh
spring in it but that's you know most of
a minute i'm sure you've noticed that if
the washing machine's off you think
everything's finished you go why can't i
open the door why can't i open the door
and that's because you're waiting for
this
this thing to come all the way back down
um
and uh
and then when this opens it lets it know
but this is mechanically is keeping it
closed uh whether there's power or not
or whether you know whether the circuit
boards are working or not so it's a nice
safety interlock
big clive has turned down a uk version
of this which is made
way way simpler and
cheaper and i'm surprised because
usually you know in the race to the
bottom for cheap manufacturing the
united states is on top so this is uh
kind of surprisingly uh complicated and
uh
robust for what it does but
anyway so
that's it and i hope that was was uh
reasonably
clear so you need to energize the so the
relay the solenoid you need to
um have something inserted into the door
so that um current can then flow through
the door closed and then you could just
daisy chain that to this heater
uh which would start this running up and
then eventually close this and pass
current through this last
uh loop so those would be the the you
know the steps um it's it's closed it's
locked and the safety is is working for
jeffrey
jeffrey
hey i wanna make you famous
yeah you're gonna be part of the youtube
thing so so thank you all right
stay dry
and thanks to miraculous yet terrifying
efficiency of amazon this came in less
than a day cost
about 30 bucks 31 bucks
and you can get this at home depot for
25 delivered free if you're willing to
wait a little longer
we have to do laundry so
[Music]
i also see these some oems you know
appliance parts trying to say their
parts are better charging like 80 bucks
for this thing but i can't believe
there's more than one factory making
this stuff or you know that there's a
good one and a bunch of chinese
knockoffs but who knows i just get the
cheapest one you can and you know if it
goes out uh replace it again a little
nice new uh grease in there so the first
thing we want to do is test the relay
coil in this one so i can give you a
figure for what uh a likely
well verify that it works i can run my
own diagnostics on this thing
um so we'll put this on here and on here
and we get 1.3
k so that's my relay this one's
continuity so this one obviously works
when my other one didn't
and uh just for grins let's run the
other test and test the wax motor here
hang on
power on power
i should really put a stopwatch in the
frame or something so you could
watch the second stick by here instead
of just a
so here i'll i'll jiggle my hand
oh well this one's different it just
snapped on it didn't bounce so maybe
they have made some engineering
improvements okay power off
that feels pretty warm i think maybe a
little hotter than the old one so the
power's off now we're waiting for it to
cool
oh so that's much better that just snaps
on and off uh but the other one was
bouncing so i guess um pitted contacts
are not a problem in this one maybe they
did change something i'm not going to
open it up i'm going to put it in
so we can do laundry i should have
covered earlier how we figured out this
might need replacing there is a
diagnostic mode on on our particular
washing machine and most of them and
i've got a technical sheet from my
appliance guy of how to get to the error
codes and stuff in case you're washing
machines similar i'll link that up in
the description along with this
wiring diagram so you can download both
but essentially i think you hold down
the option key and the
start key at the same time or pause
cancel and it goes into diagnostic mode
and then you you twiddle the the mode
selector you know rinse heavy wash
delicate wash and it does different
tests and you can get an error code that
flashes on our display and we got a
41 i think which is the control board
thinks the door is open so that's why it
wouldn't start and that's what led me um
to this
so i'm going to put it in thank you for
watching this especially thanks to the
subscribers who've been putting up with
me since i don't have any particular
focus to this channel and keep doing one
odd thing after another i appreciate you
all for sticking with me since we're
closing in on a thousand subscribers i
know most of you watching this are going
to be hit and run people who just want
the information to fix your washer but
if you'd subscribe that's great
anyway uh
thanks for watching and like this and
we'll see you on the next one
[Music]
okay big moment before we fight
this retaining ring back in let's
see if it works
alexa turn washer on
okay it's working
and it's wet
[Music]
hey wife get to work
you're supposed to say yes dear bite me
okay
i'm sorry you had to see that
you