Worm Theory

Around the last week or two of the school year, my Kitchenaid mixer starting acting up.  All my bread-making has clearly weathered the machine, and by Memorial Day, it had pretty much stopped working.  After googling how to fix a Kitchenaid, I came to the conclusion that it must be the worm gear that was worn down, and for only a few bucks worth of parts I could fix it myself.  Which was obviously a much better alternative to dropping half a grand on a brand new mixer instead!  Right???

 New worm gear.

Ethan was especially excited when he saw the little package come in the mail yesterday with the replacement piece ready to be swapped out.  When he asked this morning if he could please fix the mixer, I relented and told him he could help.  And you know what?  He really was kind of helpful.  

 Look at me -- I'm so handy with a screwdriver.

 Kitchenaid innards.  Replete with LOTS and LOTS of grease.

I always like to say that you can pretty much do ANYTHING so long as you have the right tools, and this project was no exception.  Except in this case, we DIDN'T have all the right tools, so it was quite a bit trickier.  After getting the transmission housing off, we attempted to clean out the grease and see what was wrong with the gears.  After doing a little jury-rigging to get everything apart -- retaining clip pliers REALLY would have come in handy here -- we quickly determined that the worm gear I had ordered online was NOT the right one for this particular model and that what we actually needed was a Worm Follower Gear.  Doh!  {Thank goodness for Youtube.} 

 Helping to clean all that grease.

The current worm follower gear -- totally and completely stripped.

After a quick run to The Home Depot, I discovered that I would need to order the replacement part online once again, and promptly placed that order as soon as I was back home.  The bad news is that it looks like my dismantled mixer will be setting up camp on the kitchen table {and getting grease everywhere} until it comes.  The good news, however, is that the gear pieces were pretty cheap and it really wasn't all that hard to take everything apart.  Once the correct piece arrives, I'm anticipating that switching things out and putting everything back together again will be easy, peasy, lemon sneezy as well.  So, there you go!  In a few days' time, I will hopefully have my mixer back up and running.  Stay tuned for the big reveal...