The most common cause of when a washing machine jumps and bangs on spin is an uneven load. Occasional jumping around may not be anything to worry about if it isn’t banging too much. However, regular or severe banging on the sides should be a cause for concern.
This can cause expensive damage to your washing machine if ignored. A general rocking around of a washing machine on spin may just be caused by an uneven floor, or an un-level washing machine. If the washing machine moves slightly out of position it could just be because it is on a tiled or otherwise shiny floor and the rubber feet just slide around too easily.
When does it bang?
If the washing machine is banging around quite a lot the first thing to do is to observe when the banging occurs. If it’s at random parts of the wash cycle when it’s supposed to be just washing that’s bad news. It may have an intermittent fault that causes the motor to surge into a spin at random. This fault needs an engineer to diagnose.
Does it bang as soon as the motor begins turning?
If it jumps around and bangs as soon as the motor starts then the washing machine may have lost control of the motor. Some faults can cause the motor to only spin, and to lose all the slow wash rotation speeds. That could be something to do with the tacho coil and/or magnet in the motor. Check this article to see what a tacho coil is.
However, if it only bangs during a proper spin, especially when it just starts up or is dying down from spin, then the chances are it’s related to the load inside.
New washing machine?
If a newly installed washing machine is jumping and banging on spin, make sure the transit packaging has been removed. Transit packaging holds the suspension solid.
If the tub can’t bounce up and down then the movement created on spin is translated to side to side movement. The washing machine will move about and shake.
See the instruction manual for instructions on how to remove the transit packaging.
Are you loading the drum properly?
Don’t cram the drum full of laundry. Overloading is not good, but surprisingly, under-loading is more likely to cause out of balance loads. Likewise badly mixed items of laundry can cause an unbalanced drum.
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Before a proper spin the drum should revolve slowly for a couple of minutes. If a load is out of balance you can often observe the inner drum lurching from side to side.
You might even see it gently thumping the sides of the casing a few times whilst it’s trying to distribute the load prior to fast spin.
At this stage you may see large flashes of metal drum on each revolution. This would be where laundry has settled around the drum but there wasn’t enough to cover all of it.
If this happens the drum will be out of balance. It may refuse to spin, or if allowed to spin the drum could thump around and hit the sides of the casing. See the best way to load a washing machine drum
Loading washing machine correctly but still bangs & jumps
This is unfortunately a difficult fault to diagnose. It could be various things including a faulty connection somewhere on the motor or pcb, especially if intermittent. It can be caused by a part overheating, cutting out and then cutting back in causing loss of control. Or it could even be something like a faulty shock absorber.
If this fault isn't caused by the loading you really need to get an experienced engineer to look at it. Find a washing machine repairer on Whitegoodshelp
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i have recently purchased front loader samsung and it jumped so violently on spinning that i thought it is going to fall from my kitchen balcony. I tried both with less and lighter load as well as full packed.Now really afraid to go near.Can someone help me.
My husband purchased our washer brand new from our local home improvement store. The washer is approximately 2 1/2 – 3 yrs old. Just a few months ago it started doing the violent shaking thing when it is in the high speed end part of the wash cycle & the high speed spin end part of the rinse. The machine rocks so much that it moves forward a few inches. We live on a very limited income & have very little cash on hand to fix the machine. Will it damage the washer very much if we continue using it as is?
Continuing to use anything that is making a lot of noise is likely to eventually lead to it breaking down altogether with a more expensive repair. I can only really point you to the advice already in my article at the bottom under “I’m loading the washing machine correctly but it still bangs and jumps on spin”.