It is said that men never read the manual. We would rather struggle for hours with a task than admit that we don’t know what we’re doing. YouTube has made it a little easier because now we can watch someone else do it rather than trying to sort out those exploded diagrams and cryptic directions.
There is a problem with the YouTube approach. I knew that we had a washing machine repair to perform when we got out to our house on the coast. I had the model number of our washer and found a video on YouTube that directly addressed the problem that we had. I had the spare part and figured that this was going to be one of the easiest repairs I’d ever done.
It didn’t work out that way and that is the lesson for the day. Everything went exactly as portrayed in the video until we tried to get the top off the machine. We tried to replicate exactly what was done in the video, but the top wouldn’t budge. In the process, I scratched the front of the washer. We even tried the “get a bigger hammer” approach and still the top stayed firmly in place. With some light on the lid, I was able to see that there was no way to lift the lid the same way it was done in the video.
If you’ve ever worked on appliances you know that there is an easy and effortless way to disassemble them. The problem is that the way to do this is hidden. The mechanical engineers must take immense pleasure in coming up with new ways to assemble and disassemble just to keep the appliance repair people in business. This was when the Internet came to the rescue. I purchased the service manual for our exact machine and quickly discovered that rather than the lid lifting from the front it had to be slid forward from the back.
With the proper instructions, we were able to complete the repair in a short amount of time. The moral of this story is follow the instructions, just make sure they are the right instructions for your situation. Following the wrong instructions can result in much wasted effort and damage to you or the machine.
Leave a Reply