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How to replace door seal in Indesit W101 washing machine

1. Unplug from mains electricity.
2. Pull machine out from wall carefully.
3. Remove screws in top corners (that are holding down the top panel of the machine) at the back of machine.
4. Remove top panel of machine (slide it slightly in the direction of the back of the machine, it just lifts off).
5. Remove the detergent drawer (pull it right out and put it to the side)
6. Remove the two screws at the top of the gap where the detergent drawer goes in
7. Remove the two screws at the top, front of the machine
8. Now lift out the panel with the control dials on it (etc.). Careful here, you don’t have to disconnect all of them, you should just be able to put this to the side with all the wires still connected.
9. If the old door seal is still on (if not go to 10):
a. Look carefully at the arrangement of the rubber at the lip of the drum and the door rim (you’ll need to know so you can put the new one on)
b. The outer rim is sealed in by a circular wire linked by a small spring. It’s a bit tricky but you can unhook the spring from the wire (using a blunt knife to lever it out – careful not to damage the rubber) to remove it.
c. The inner rim is sealed with a larger circular spring. You can either lever this out with the same blunt knife, or just pull hard on the rubber to get it out, and the rubber off.
10. Now position the new rubber door seal between the drum and the door
11. Grip tight around the outside and inside of the rubber door seal and attach it to the lip of the drum. This is the trickiest bit, and seems impossible but it is doable. The key here is that once you have a bit of it on, the rest will slip on as you work around it the circle. Even at the bottom and sides where your hands can’t reach it should slip on nicely. It ain’t easy, give it time.
12. Now get the spring on the inner rim to seal it (again, not easy, give it time and muscle – you need 3 hands for this!)
13. Then attach the outer rim to the lip of the door rim, and hook the metal wire back in place with the little spring.
14. Put the panels and screws back in in the reverse order to how they came off/out. Make sure there’s no parts left over, ey!
15. There you go – plug it back in and run a test wash. Check for leaks.

I hope this helps. I took mine off our machine to clean it, couldn’t get it back on at first. Called TWO engineers, neither or whom could get it back on (and collected £50 each in call-out fees). Indesit would have charged £100 call-out fee. What a scam. Don’t believe the customer service people when they say it’s easy to replace.

Tony Maher
March 2007