Agitator Dogs

The inserts of our pocket diapers haven't been getting cleaned as well recently. We assumed it was because we were being lazy and not removing the pee and poop-ridden inserts by hand. The inserts were coming out by the end of the wash cycle, but they may have been only coming out in the last spin cycle. After I started another wash cycle this morning, I found another potential reason - the agitator wasn't agitating. After some quick Googling, I found a lot of videos which explained the probable cause: agitator dog wear. Below is the agitator.

After pulling the top off, we can see a (scummy) cap. The (scummy) cap can be pulled off.

Now we can see the mechanism of the agitator. It's similar to a bicycle hub, where a ratchet-spline system is used to propel the shaft. After removing the 7/16 bolt in the center we can get at the individual parts.

After pulling out the inner section we can easily see the splines (tooth-looking things) of the agitator shell.

The agitator dogs are the yellow plastic bits on the photo below. On a bike hub, they'd be called ratchets. A local Sears appliance store had them in stock, so we didn't have to wait for an Amazon delivery. This must be a fairly popular product, since the women at the store knew what I was talking about when I asked if they had a "reservoir dog" in stock.

The new agitator dogs have three teeth on them - the older dogs have maybe one tooth left. Once I popped in the new dogs and put it all back together, the agitator was working very vigorously again. It was an easy fix and only cost about $20 in parts ($10 for an extender rod for the ratchet and the agitator dogs were another $10). I'm sure a service call would have cost a lot more money.