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Had a control board failure on a LG washer yesterday that was a total nightmare to diagnose
I got called to a house in Fresno yesterday for a washer that would fill, drain, fill, drain, never spin. Customer said it had been doing this for 2 weeks. I checked all the usual stuff, door lock, pressure switch, drain pump, all tested fine. Then I noticed the main control board had a tiny burnt spot near the relay. I've seen these LG boards fail before but this one was sneaky because it still showed power to the display. I ended up replacing the whole board on site and it fired right up on the test cycle. That repair cost the customer $285 for the part plus my labor. Anyone else running into more of these intermittent board failures with LG stuff lately?
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lee62719d agoMost Upvoted
Did you check the relay itself before swapping the board? A tiny burnt spot on the board can just be a bad solder joint, not a dead controller. I've fixed a few LG boards by reflowing the relay and it cost me nothing but time.
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harperschmidt19d ago
Wait, was the burnt spot actually on the relay itself or just on the board near it? I had a similar thing happen with a Samsung fridge compressor board last spring where the whole thing looked fine except this tiny dark spot that almost looked like a dirt smudge. @lee627, I get what you're saying about a simple reflow maybe fixing it cheap, but with LG boards I've noticed they're so cheaply made that trying to repair them is like patching a leaky boat with gum. I told my customer the same thing, it's usually not worth the risk if you already see visible damage, just swap it and move on. That $285 board you mentioned sounds about right, these control boards have gotten ridiculous in price for what they are.
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