I drempt of applying for a job at Beko just to get the training and info at their expense, then quitting on the first day. I think that would be the right level of therapy for me.
Thanks! That helps. This msg brought me to a rar file for a similar machine with the same text as you found. So I was able to see the error code, but clearing it does not work.
Thank you! That is very useful. That document mafia page looks vaguely familiar. I wonder if I saw that at some point and gave up, because I got this just now:
“Cannot contact reCAPTCHA. Check your connection and try again.”
I have little tolerance for any CAPTCHA. Since it seemed relevant and you already confirmed there was a gem in there, I made more effort… enabled more and more layers of nested JavaScript, turned on images, and got past it.
It’s progress for sure. Holding the 1st auxillary button revealed the error code, which I have attached. Looks like this for anyone else with images disabled (black=unlit):
Ⓞ⚫Ⓞ⚫⚫ Ⓞ⚫⚫⚫
There is still a secret decoding ring missing, but if I can assume that the top row of LEDs are 1’s and 0’s from left to right, I apparently have error code 101 (in binary, which is “5” in decimal):
H5 : PUMP OPEN OR SHORT CIRCUIT
That’s not what I was expecting. I was expecting a tacho failure. The pump spun fine when I hotwired it and the tacho was clearly visibly broken.
The wiring diagram shows that the resistence across the pump should be 75.6 Ω. I measured 141.1 Ω using a crappy pocket multimeter on the PCB side of the wire (so long cable included). That difference seems huge. I’m not sure what to think of this. I don’t think the PCB would be sophisticated enough to measure resistence. So I wonder if I am misinterpreting the error code.
I cannot clear the error code. After displaying the error code, I hold Start/Pause for a few seconds and it gives a quick flash as if to acknowledge that the error should be cleared or that it took an action. But it returns to the same error state anyway.
WMD 26125 T
I managed to get the (useless) user manual (which is not easy for someone who refuses CAPTCHAs and other shenanigans by the user manual mafia cartels). But I could not find any trace of a service manual. The leading “WMD” seems to be significant. It marks the time period. There are many models with that prefix but any service manual for a WMD-prefixed machine might be useful.
Beko’s parent company is “Bionaire”, though I don’t think I’ve seen washing machines branded as Bionaire. I’ve heard Beko rebadges other machines, but I don’t know if my machine has any other underlying or parent brand.
Note from my other thread I spoke to a Beko tech support person who was willing to help. He asked what was wrong and started to speculate on the issue. Then I ran out of phone credit credit and we got cut off. I think he was guessing that the motor was bad, but it actually turned out to be a broken tacho, which I later fixed.
When I called back after fixing the tacho and buying more GSM time, I was hoping to reach the same person but got a useless lazy fucker instead, who could not be bothered to look anything up.
The person I spoke to on my first call put me on hold to go collaborate with a colleague. He was also surprised to be getting a call over a 15 y/o machine, but he did not use that as an excuse for shitty service. He made an effort.
I could keep calling back until I get an answer. But it’s costly in Belgium (15 €c/min). The shitty call I posted the transcript on probably cost me €4-5 and probably ½ of that is the cost of the initial phone navigation and hold time waiting for someone.
Need a website to show good repairability of all machines. Eg iFixit or something to consult before buying any new machine.
I want my money to feed a supplier who supports repair. When a washing machine salesperson is asked: “please show me a machine that comes with a service manual (not just a user manual), wiring diagrams, and please demonstrate for me diagnostic mode on one of these showroom floor models”. Completely fucking stumps them. They cannot handle it. Not a single machine. They look at me like I am crazy for asking. Thus I will not buy a single new machine. From where I sit it’s crazy that they can still sell disposable washing machines in 2025 – while the EU’s Right-To-Repair law has been tied up in discussion for over 10 years.
Maybe I would buy a 2nd hand machine, if I can verify that leaked repair literature exists first. Which is a problem because the pop-up street market I would buy one from is there for just 1 day. Then next week that day might have different sellers and different models.
I would be interested in trying. Would the serial port that I describe here be the way to dump the f/w?
My laptop docking station has a DB-9 port.
right, that’s why I assumed it’s a serial connection. But what device is meant to connect to it?
it’s probably not something I want to reverse engineer blindly. I was looking to find out if someone knows exactly what device is intended to connect to it and what info it gives. After getting the vague hint that a similar port on my boiler is apparently meant for sending SMSs, I want to know whether this is worth my effort.
I really wish I could buy a new model control panel and put it on an old model so I can get useable diagnostics. (maybe I can?) Really hard to accept there is a water supply issue. It fills fine and it knows when to stop filling. The pump is fine, and also clear when I drain it and examine behind the drain plug. Surely if there were a water supply issue it would not fill the tub then decide after filling the tub and making some a few short fast spins that there is a water supply issue. I’ll pull out the water filter and see if anything looks sketchy. But I somewhat suspect the speed controller since the tumble (wash) cycle is way too fast.
I wish I had an error code but when it faults out it just gives a non-stop steady blinking LED. No variation that would indicated an error code.
Multimeters can be used to simply find out if a part is working. I recently used it when I lost hot water. By reading the voltage of the flow sensor, it was clear that the flow sensor bad (water running should give voltage X and still water should give voltage Y). I’m not sure how many such opportunities there are with washing machines though.
Thanks for the references. Looks dicey though. I thought maybe this archive might give docs that are close enough to my model, but I could not get past the CAPTCHA. It also looks like a lot of docs on that site are in a cryllic language. But I appreciate your effort nonetheless. If I seem to have no other option I might try to get around the CAPTCHA somehow.
Youtube is also rough going. There seems to be an ocean of useless Beko review videos and not much on repairing. Youtube’s protectionism makes them quite hard to use lately but if I can get past the obsticles I might look for repair videos on machines other than Beko and see if any of them help well enough.
There’s a point where it will be easier to toss the machine and get another but so far I’m trying to resist that.
yeah i tried unplugging from the wall. I don’t know if there is a separate motor controller board or if the motor controller is integrated into the same board with all the controls. I’m not sure how risky it is to replace the main controller board as a guess. I would like some certainty on where the fault is.
And maybe it is the motor. It looks like it spins fine to me, but if it’s at the edge of its life maybe it’s giving feedback to the controller that signals an issue with the motor.
In the case at hand, every function seems to work. When I start a program it starts by pumping water out from the last program. Tub fills with water fine. But at the start of the wash cycle it attempts a high-speed spin with a full tub of water, which seems quite bizarre. Attempting a high-speed spin with water in the tub causes it to jump because of all the weight. It /should/ just slowly rotate in one direction, then the other direction. But instead it does a 2 second spin then pauses for a minute. Then it repeats that 2 second high-speed spin then pauses. After 4 or so repeats of that it quits and leaves a blinking start button.
My first thought was that it detected overloading or an imbalanced load and maybe tried to balance the load. But it does the same thing empty. The belt is fine and the motor is obviously strong enough to make it spin as far as I can tell. But maybe something that controls the motor is broken. I am stuck because I don’t know how to probe the various parts with my multimeter as far as what readings I should look for.
The machine has a spin-only program that should do nothing but spin. When I run that program, it obviously does not add water. It just starts the spin (as expected) but pauses 2 sec after starting to spin… waits a min, then tries again. It looks like it spins fine but it’s giving up anyway.
Thanks. I had to translate it. It’s a troubleshooting guide for some common issues, but not my issue. I have the user manual for my model which has a troubleshooting table but it is not useful here.
I’m far from trying to track down the atomic component. I need to get an idea of what is failing. There should be readings I can take with the multimeter to see whether the motor is bad, or the controller for the motor, or something else. I’m not bothered at this point whether I can fix whatever part is broken. I might be fine with replacing a whole part. But I need to get there. I need to know which part is failing.
WMD 26125 T
I am so much more motivated than the typical consumer. My goal is that when someone else (your typical lazy consumer who may only care to get a refund) returns a can of worms to the grocery store, that the grocer have an obligation¹ to record the food quality/security issue and report it in a way that it gets tracked and ideally in a centralised place.
So indeed as I said, we need to evolve more. We have banks hyper-reporting on mere suspicion of something they perceive as off under excessive AML rules as if there is a gun to their head, yet you bring a real live creepy crawly to a grocer and there is minimal action… as you say getting swept under the rug as shrinkage.
¹ or pressure of some kind.
It’s something that should have been recorded and analysed. Perhaps they would discover something, like maybe they should inspect the rooibos before adding the white chocolate (if they are not already).
I suspect all the manual wardens are actually harvesting archive.org then focusing their effort on getting a high search rank. Notice if you expand archive.org’s filters, there is a subject preset for manualzilla and manualzz. So when liberating a manual, it also feeds the baddies. But nothing we can do on that.
I’ll probably change my habits to search archive.org first, before using a web search.