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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Hello Jacob. When it bangs, if you can see that the drum is swaying about violently and the outer drum is hitting the sides of the casing then the fault you are troubleshooting is related to suspension or load balancing faults. If not, and it just makes a loud knocking noise on spin try reading this article carefully to try and work out the most likely cause – washing machine is noisy
Another possibility is a faulty suspension leg, if when you bounce the drum up and down you can hear the noise try to see where it’s coming from with the back panel off. Loose tub weights can cause a loud knocking noise and this is explained in my noise washing machines article.
Hi. I have a one year old 8kg load LG washing machine. It jumps all over the place on a 1000 spin. It is so heavy that I have trouble pushing it back into place. I have tried the little squares which you stick to the floor which came with the machine but it has just broken those up. I have a wooden floor and wonder if this is part of the problem.
My washing machine works fine with a small load, about an hour for full cycle. When I add a few more pieces of clothing the washer gets stuck in the spin cycle taking several times longer to complete the spin cycle. The clothes are balanced and relatively light, no towels. Is the spin cycle that sensitive to a few more pieces of laundry or is there something else I can do?
Thanks Greg
Hi Greg. Under-loading causes unbalanced loads but there is a point where the load is so under weight that it doesn’t cause out of balance because the laundry just isn’t heavy enough. As you add more laundry it’s possible for it to become heavy enough to cause out of balance issues but still “under-loaded”. Try adding even more laundry to see if it then becomes an optimal load. As long as there is a reasonable amount of space at the top of the laundry as described in my article loading a washing machine you should be ok.
I have had some strange banging noises coming from my washing machine (BEKO), after reading through the other statements I checked the filter at the bottom of the washing machine and found several hair clips and a large piece of plastic stuck in the filter. I must say since these have been removed the washing machine sounds like a new one again. I can’t thank you enough for the tips given. Many thanks and regards :) Merry Christmas Gregg :)
Very useful article, thanks. I have a built in Electrolux probably nine years old that vibrates violently on spinning. I can feel a modest “clunk” on lifting and releasing the drum, over and above the ‘springy’ suspension movement so assumed the bearings were shot (there were also some black spots on some of the washed items). Does that sound like a reasonable diagnosis (which writes off the machine!)?
Thanks
My washing machine, a Zanussi ZWF1441, has given me a good few years of service without any trouble. However on Sunday 25 January the machine started to jump violently and move across the floor on the spin cycle. The machine is situated on a flat surface so it gave me a start, as I have an open plan kitchen/living room area, so jumped up straight away to look when it happened.
The real mystery is that the rubber door seal is now twisted, as if something like one of the towels I was washing has jammed under it, but other than the seal being twisted it’s not torn or damaged.
Any ideas on what has happened and what can be done to fix it? I haven’t used the machine since in case it makes the problem worse. Should I try use the machine once more before calling out an engineer?
All advice/input welcome.
Hi,
I put an unbalanced load in my machine, and when I noticed it banging against the side I stopped the load and tried to drain it. The machine will no longer drain/spin, and the cycles seem to be mixed up. Help!
Thanks,
Hannah
Hello Hannah. Unfortunately it could be various things so it’s not possible to advise what to do other than get an engineer in. There’s a slight possibility that a fault has developed which contributed to the banging about or it could be that the banging about has caused the other symptoms. In other words the motor could be playing up and struggling to balance the load, or everything could have been perfectly all right and an unbalanced load has damaged something. There could be connection faults, partial blockages and so on.
i was wondering. I just had my pump replaced in my front load LG because it stopped draining. It now drains but the drum is hitting the side of the machine. This did not happen before. What if anything could have the repair person broken or done during their work to cause this.?