A plastic motor bracket on a washing machine’s drum can break. This will cause the motor to come loose, and the drive belt may come off. If you look at the photo, you can see that this kind of break looks like a very difficult repair to carry out successfully. There’s a fair chance you won’t be able to do a lasting repair.
The first issue is, how has this actually broken off? It’s not something that should really happen. Maybe there was a flaw in the mould somewhere, or the plastic just isn’t strong enough.
Another possibility is that maybe the motor came loose and had been moving about within the bracket? Perhaps a noise had been ignored for a while?
If the missing piece is still available, you could try sticking it back on with some strong epoxy resin. However, I’m not sure that there is any adhesive available that is strong enough for the job.
This is because during spin, the motor is constantly trying to move and will be straining to break out due to centrifugal force created by the motor spinning. The motor is also very tightly fastened into the brackets. Torque generated by the bolts being necessarily tightened will be ever present.
Finally, there will be heavy forces at work during spin when the outer drum is bouncing around from side to side and up and down. As the motor is attached to the bottom of the drum, you can imagine quite a lot of force will be trying to shake the motor free.
I can report the experience of a Whitegoodshelp reader who tried to repair his broken motor bracket. The photo above was supplied by him.
He found some extra strong epoxy resin, advertised as being, “as strong as metal”. After sticking the broken plastic bracket back, it unfortunately came off again after one successful wash. He concluded it wasn’t possible to repair it. It was worth a try, but as I suspected, the forces of the motor movement during spin are always likely to undermine a repair.
Use your judgement though. There are usually 3 or 4 fixing points, and it could be that some are more fixable than others. If you manage a long term fix, please post a comment below.
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