Have you tried using half of the load to see if it works then. I have never ever had the need to do that many towels at one time.

LG tech support told me that LG frontloaders have very sensitive load balance sensors when I had a similar problem. It is not the number of items in the load, but the weight of the wet clothes when the load begins to spin. If all the items are made of heavy weight terrycloth, when they are saturated with water, they weigh a ton and are concentrated in one section of the tub. When the drum rotates, the load falls with a great splat. Every time the machine tries to redistribute the load, it is still concentrated in one sector of the drum hence the seemingly endless tumbling and/or banging on the side of the cabinet as the drum rotates. LG's sensors stop the drum spinning before either the water is wrung out to protect the bearings. That is the way they are supposed to work. You can see the problem this creates for heavy loads of towels, blankets, quilts and pillows.

My solution has been to vary the load content with both light and heavy items. Weight is determined by the fabric content when sopping wet. If your LG has the capacity, i.e.larger than 4.3 cu ft in the front loader, you can wash all those towels at once if they all aren't heavy weight terrycloth or heavy woven like a matelasse bedspread. I wash king size sheets with four or five towels. Results are great.

EmmaR's solution of the smaller load is also useful when the big load gets stuck after the wash cycle. Take half of it out and proceed with the rinse. You can complete your rinse of the other half on either the express wash (no soap), the rinse and spin, or add an extra rinse to the rinse and spin.

Good luck.

"What constitutes a maximum load?"

If my DH is doing laundry, the max load is the amount of dirty clothes he can find, and cram into the washer. Sometimes he keeps looking for more dirty clothes, because there's still a little room in there.

Sorry, OP, this doesn't help your situation at all, but it's what I though of when I read your title!

I have learned a lot about my LG by coming here.

I always assumed that having a larger capacity machine would allow me to wash more in one load. I knew that did NOT mean I could pack it so tight that the load would not get clean or spin properly. I do have to admit I feel frustrated in not being able just to load the machine and come back and transfer to the dryer in about 40 minutes. I completely understand what you are saying about varying the load-it just really irks me that I have to put that much effort into it. In my mind, towels are towels and I should not have to sort them because the washer might not spin. It seems with technology there has to be a method of making these things heavy duty during the spin cycle. Thanks Poppy and Emma. And I got a good laugh annkh-I guess I am more like your husband than what you all are telling me I should be.

For how many pounds (weight/size of load) is your machine rated? Does your owners manual tell you anywhere?

(Our Miele FL washer is rated for 17 lbs and I'm assuming that is "dry" not wet.)

From a "commercial laundry" point of view, ten liters of drum volume hold one kilo of dry cotton fabric. So one cubic foot of drum volume holds six pounds of clothes.

Which LG model do you have?

My model is the WM2140C which has a 3.5 cu in tub. I believe in another thread you told me the C stood for the fact that my model does not have a true heater. Which is why I never get water that is truly hot no matter what I do.

I did a load yesterday of towels and it spun without a problem. If only each time.

In the laundry business it is widely accepted that 1 cubic foot of cylinder volume equals approximately 6.5 pounds of soiled laundry. If all of the clothes items had the same volume to weighed ratio, you could just weigh every load with a scale and fill the washer to its proper capacity. But, as we all know, the volume of a comforter is not equal to that of a load of towels weighing the same. To explain how much laundry equals a properly loaded washer, the action of a front load washer needs to be examined. With the absence of an agitator, the front-load washer relies on picking up the load, with ribs inside the cylinder, and dropping it. This causes the water and soap to penetrate the clothes and remove the soil. Overloading the cylinder decreases the amount of drop and greatly reduces the washer’s effectiveness in getting items clean. Thus weight of clothes, assuming the washer weight load capacity is sufficient, is less important than their volume. Bulky items that absorb little water will have less mechanical action than smaller items that hold lots of liquid when loaded strictly by weight.

Unfortunately many of the large capacity home washers, greater than 3.5 cubic feet, are not built to handle the weight of the cloths that can be fully loaded in them by their volume especially during the spin cycle. These manufactures only list the washer’s volume capacity and do not include their weight capacity. They do this because most loads rarely exceed 15 pounds but many people do want to wash a large comforter without needed to go to the laundry and thus the reason for this dichotomy. This seems to be your problem.

Depending on the type of clothes being washed a front load washer may be fully loaded meaning every square inch of the drum can be filled with loosely packed clothes if it is designed to handle the fully loaded weight. If you stuff clothes in too tight the load will simply get wet and go around in circles with no agitating action. After the load is saturated with water the wet clothes should compress down to occupy 60-70% of the drum volume leaving enough room for good agitation to take place. During the wash cycle do a visual observation of the wash tumbling and when the cylinder is rotating clockwise, the clothes should fall from about 11 o’clock to the 4 o’clock position. This provides the necessary mechanical action for soil removal and will indicate that you did not overfill your washer. If the clothes are not tumbling in this manner then for the next load add less clothes. It is that simple. Keep in mind that clothes at the center of the load will not fall in this manner but during the wash cycle all clothes will rotate from the center of the load to the outside numerous times allowing all the clothes to experience the outer tumbling action.

Finally if your machine cannot handle the weight of your load, even though the drum is not full, you need to reduce the number of heavy items to determine what will wash and spin properly and use this to set your maximum load by weight. Thus it could very well be that your washer does not have the capability to deal with the weight of clothes even though the volume capacity would indicate otherwise.

This post was edited by SanDiego_Steve on Mon, Nov 24, 14 at 20:15

Maximum loads also depend on the cycle. European machines, with their long cycles, can wash bigger loads. My Duet (German model) can be packed all the way to the top.

I did look at the manual and service manual for the 2140 and, yes, it seems there's no way of getting a really hot wash. I got around not having a heater by using the prewash option on a commercial Speed Queen. However, this machine filled with pure 140F water twice, if prewash was selected, so the wash had a chance to get pretty hot. Don't know if the LG even allows such hot water or if it will add cold water to lower the temp. I suppose turning the cold water supply off causes an error code?

RE: balancing. The service manual only states that the load must be unbalanced if the washer won't spin. No word on overloading or anything. :-/