Well - the company I called to come out and look at the washing machine knows their stuff. Once listen to the noise, and the repair guy knew what was wrong - and he showed me the cracked part. It's being replaced as I write this. The repair is a tad expensive, but heck - it's the day after Christmas. I'm just happy that we'll have a working washer again, with only 2 days of downtime.

So much better than my last go round with home repair :)