We just bought a house and it had a washing machine in there. Initially it just seemed really dirty so we gave it a good scrub and ran a few hot cycles with vinegar and baking soda to clean out the mold and scrud. When we finally thought we were done and ran the first run with a load it made a very loud grinding sound when spinning. When it was done, we found bits of ground up plastic in the drum.
I have tried running it a few more times, and the sound is sometimes better and sometimes worse, and we always find ground up plastic. Moving the door seal out of the way, you can see where the plastic is coming from: it looks like it is a plastic ring behind the drum that is disintegrated and I can pull bits off. I have attached a picture of both the plastic ring and the remains of a part I removed.
Is this part of the plastic tub that somehow got misaligned? Is it fixable? Or should we scrap the machine?
Model is Electrolux EWF 1287.