Thanks to Tom (TJC Transport) I had a great afternoon of shooting the breeze, dissecting a washer for it's motor, pulley, clutch and transmission, and the pleasure of saturating his truck and my driveway with some kind of non-smelly gearcase oil!

Anyway, when I leeched the motor out of the washer, I snagged about 3' of wiring, but didn't take it all the way up to the switches.

So, I guess I'm in need of a wiring diagram of some kind. I'm hoping one of you folks might be familar with these type of motors.

It's a 1/2" HP, 1725 RPM "square" GE motor, part number #5KH42DT748. I googled for the part number, no hits. Tried a variety of combinations of washer motor, ge washer motor, ge washer 5KH and didn't come up with anything, which suprised me.

It has five wires coming out of it.
Light Blue, Orange, White, Black and Yellow.

Might anyone know what goes where?

The blue and orange wires go to what looks like a choke - a bakelight plastic thing with thick magnet wire wrapped around it. Off the other two terminals there are a green and a pinkish wire that follows the white, black and yellow wires about 2", and that's where I cut it.

There are other wires in the bundle also, but they are for the clutch which I tested and got working no problem.

Thanks in advance!

 

Most washers have a wiring diagram on them. Otherwise you might try the manufacturer's model number for the washer.

 

Of which I don't have either LMAO. I'll take it to an appliance repair shop and see if I can get lucky.

 

That would be your best bet.

 

Did you open the access cover where the wires go into the motor. There should be a diagram there for what is what. Sounds like its a 2 speed motor with either a speed sensor or thermal overload... Or possibly a 3 speed.

 

Four appliance stores, four places that would only offer my a replacement motor.

I made a "motor test jig" which has some switches and a 200W light bulb in series with the hot, just in chase I shorted something by guessing what the wires do.



Blue/Yellow - drives motor
White/Orange - starts motor

The white/orange apparently can only be touched across 120V for a fraction of a second as I can hear crackling in the motor. I'll have to investigate more how these things are wired, but at least I know that four of the wires actually do something.

Not sure what the black wire is for - it's not ground, and it's apparently not connected to any of the other wires.

Well, that was a waste of 3 hours of my time lmao. Well, the 3 hours included breaking the pin that holds the clutch on, and having to drill it out, beat it out, and finally out of frustration, bandsawing the clutch off

 

well, if you want the wiring diagram, it is about 55 ft up, in the left pile in the rear of beacon's south amboy yard.

oh and by the way, we took apart the wrong machine. the one we took apart was the one with the burnt out motor. we were supposed to take the one in the front of the truck apart.























just kiddin

 

Well, I learned a valuable lesson. The next time I leech a washing machine motor, I copy down the wiring diagram that's on the inside of the machine!

I got it working. Not sure if it's working correctly, but it spins on it's own. Tonight, I'm going to see if I can reverse it. If so, that's good. If not, I have to make an extra gear, spindle, and lever down the road.

 

Most of them are reversible. That is how they get the extra functions like agitate -vs- spin etc.

I use one of those motors to power an old York compressor out of an old Ford. It has worked for 25 years as a vacuum pump and to fill tires and blow dirt off things around the shop. I used part of the washing machine motor mount for a base. I still use it downstairs in the basement shop even tho I have another compressor.

 

That's cool. I want to use it to drive a lathe. Reversable is a good feature.

Finally got the schematic, someone was kind enough to send me a scanned copy. Oddly drawn, a little disorganized, but I'll figure it out eventually.

If it's reversable, that saves me making a gear

 

Turns out to be totally reversable.

The "trick" is to leave the run windings wired to the mains, and reverse the start winding to switch directly.

Nothing a momentary DPDT toggle can't solve. Tested it today, and it now spins in both directions!

So today I installed a pulley on it, and measured it up to make the mount. Fun stuff, I know