Who doesn't like a little excitement?

Well this morning, Ryan to be thoughtful decides to start our laundry (which we do every Saturday) while I sleep in a little. However, he comes back in a little bit later (8:30am) whispering in my ear to me, "Alison, the washer is broken again, how did you fix it last time?". Now, anyone who knows me knows that, 1. waking me up on a saturday morning isn't a good thing to try, and 2. waking me up and asking me to think right away is a dangerous thing to do. So I was grumpy and replied, "I just jiggled it until it worked, and I'll look at it later". Well, when I woke up at 11:30 am (we stayed out late at a friend's party), I looked at it and decided that I wasn't going to be able to jiggle it back into working, and that the knob was acting more funny than it usually does.
So last time our washer "broke" the knob you turn to set the cycle would free spin and the whole "housing" would move (aka. the knob wouldn't pull out/push in). This happened right after we bought the set, used, for $100. Well I was able to play and jiggle it, and get it to lock into place and work (for the last 3 1/2 months).
From just looking at the washer from the outside, I diagnosed that this time the same thing was happening, but the knob seemed to be free spinning more (around in a circle to set the cycle). And so I told Ryan that we really needed to look inside and see what's wrong with it. So we took the front panel off and saw that the cpu/timer had plastic tabs that held it in place so that it could allow the knob to pull out/push in. Well only one tab was left and so the whole cpu/timer was moving making it impossible to turn the washer on and off. I'm assuming last time that the tabs on the left and right were there and that the tab on the left had just popped out of place, and I was able to get it back in place to work.
After looking online at Home Depot's appliance repair parts site I found out what all of the parts were we were dealing with and how much they cost. To replace the cpu/timer it would cost $85-90 dollars + shipping, but our cpu/timer works, it's just the plastic tabs that are broken so Ryan and I decided to see if we could figure out a way to adhere it without replacing the unit. We also found out that our knob, only has 1/2 of a tooth left (which makes it really hard to set the cycle), instead of 10-12 teeth. So we went to Lowe's and asked if they had any knobs there in the store and they said you had to order it, the funny thing was that we found the exact same knob on a new washer (no redesign there) and could compare them, and the difference was so remarkable.
Anyways we got some plumbing metal used to hold pipes in place and some screws and attached our cpu/timer back to the front panel. Then we put the knob back on so that we can just use it to start and stop the washer, and now we use the back part of the knob (with the arrow) to set the cycle. I think it works pretty well, and we can get a new knob pretty easily now. Here are some pictures of the fix:

After our new adhering design. You can see where the one remaining tab is in the bottom left (it just slides into place, no screwing in). It used to have 2 tabs slide in, and then one small plastic tab with a screw on the other side by the green wires, but you can't see it.

Ryan showing off his handiwork, which is solidly in place and he even got the holes on the metal to line up with a circle shaped plastic thing that doesn't have a functional use otherwise.

Ryan re-attaching the front panel and doing the manual labor. As you can see the power cord is out now. Funny thing is the first thing I checked when I went to fiddle with it was if it was plugged in. However, I don't think Ryan did this because he said that as he was trying to fix it this morning some water started filling up in the basin. Oops.

See the nice teeth that our cpu/timer still has?

Sorry this picture is blurry, but you can kinda see the little upward 1/2 a tooth we have...

This is a better picture of our knob, but it doesn't show how flat it is. All those marks except the top one are actually concave, and don't stick out at all.

This is what we now turn to set the washer, until we get a new knob. It connects directly to the cpu/timer's teeth using a tab/slot.

Ta Da~! Final assembly (which works). The knob is there to start/stop the washer and the arrow is what actually sets it. Hurray. Now Tina can come and use our laundry next week again since her dryer broke. And we won't smell next week because we're running out of clothes.

Anyways, hope everythings going well.