Washers are pretty easy to take apart (hopefully pretty easy to put back together too).
Sometimes in appliance repair, the hardest part is figuring out how to open the darn thing up. Once you get them open it's pretty straightforward. Appliances are made to have components replaced (as opposed to repairing components).
There's some really good help on the web too. One good example is applianceaid.com.
Actually I really like to take stuff apart and see how it works, so spending Saturday night laying under a washing machine is pretty fun for me. We had a really old dryer years ago that I took apart and put back together so many times I used to joke with my wife I could disassemble and reassemble that dryer in the dark.
With a direct drive washing machine such as mine a common drive problem is the drive coupler. It's a rubber bushing and two plastic sprocket devices used to connect the motor to the gearcase/clutch assembly. You can buy one for around 10 bucks.
Unfortunately for this washer, the problem is a stripped/damaged gear inside the gearcase. A gearcase is around 150 bucks. I almost got one on Ebay for 20 but I got outbid by 50 cents. I'm going to go to a used appliance place tomorrow and see if I can get a gearcase. Actually you can buy just the gear that is stripped...but it's over 50 bucks and I can't see how to get it off the shaft without a special gear puller of some sort.
If I can't get the part for less than 60 or so, I'll buy a new washer. I'm not going to put 150-170 bucks into a washer when I can buy a new one for 300 and up.
In the mean time at least our dryer is still working. My contingency plan is to take showers with my clothes on and then throw them in the dryer. I told my daughter that when I was a kid we didn't have a washer or a dryer. We'd take a bath in our clothes and then dry them in the oven. It was hard walking to school in the morning if your pants weren't totally dry and it was sub-zero outside.
I made this little collage of pictures to show what a Whirlpool direct drive washer looks like taken apart...and give you some idea of the steps to get it apart. (Assembly is the reverse of disassembly as they say...plus there are some good blow-up parts lists on the web you can use if you can't quite see how some of the small parts fit back together). It's really not that hard...but then again I've always like to play around with stuff like this...so it might be way hard for someone not so inclined to tinkering.
