The Dryer, Part 2

 

This is my dryer.  It stopped working.  It was running just fine and then it stopped.  There was a slightly smoky smell to the clothing inside and I was worried that there was a fire some where in the recesses of the motor.  There wasn't.  Very glad about that, I am.

These are the magnets that profess my love for Jim The Office.  I think they're funny.

This is the dryer with its top removed.

This is the dryer with the front opened.  See those flimsy little wires near the bottom?  They're the only thing connecting the front to the rest of the machine.  Those little wires were a constant source of worry to me during this whole process.  They go to the door switch and if I broke them I wouldn't have light in my dryer any more.

My method for keeping track of the various screws and where they belong on the dryer.

This is the dryer when I finally got the flingin-flangin-belt off the drum, motor and idler pulley.  That took some serious contortions and a bruised arm.

The freed drum!

The empty housing.  At this point I still had no idea what caused the malfunction.  I was just happy to have it mostly taken apart.  Getting to this point took the better part of 2 hours.

The back side of the drum.  Paul thought the bearing kit was bad.  That's the round, sort of pointy looking thing in the middle of the drum.  I had no idea what a good or bad bearing kit looked like.  I did notice that spotty gray scrape mark going around the outer edge of the circle of triangular cut outs.  It was clear the paint had been scraped off with something but I thought it was normal wear and tear.  (Hint: it wasn't.)  Also, Paul was not here during any of this.  I sent him pictures of this and a video of me moving the bearing kit around and asked if it looked normal to him.  He wasn't sure.

Being the clean freak I am, I had to vacuum the copious amounts of dust and lint and a few lost buttons from the floor of the machine.  It was very therapeutic.  I also had a high time digging out great handfuls of lint from the door and vent tube.

At this point there followed a lot of speculation on both Paul's and my parts regarding what the problem was.  It clearly was not the belt because that sucker was very much intact when I opened everything up.  Everything else appeared to be in good repair as well so we decided the thing to do was order a bearing kit.  I did.  When I picked it up I felt a sense of foreboding -- it looked exactly like what was attached to the drum.  This likely mean that the kit I had was fine.

Paul studied the dryer some more and found a tiny broken wire at the bottom of the dryer housing.  My Dyson missed it.  It's actually a good thing it did or we might not have figured out the problem.  Paul realized that it had broken off the heating element causing the element not to connect at one of its terminals.  This meant the end of the element was scraping the back of the drum, hence the scratched paint I noticed.  It also burned up all the lint that was stuck to the back of the drum, hence the burning smell.  I'm really lucky the whole thing didn't burst into flames with our clothes inside.

So I ordered a new heating element and took the bearing kit back.  I lost a 10% restocking fee on the bearing kit. Who invented restocking fees?  I'd like to give them a piece of my mind.

Paul was nice enough to string the new heating element for me.  That's his mostly consumed beverage off to the right there.  He said that stringing heating elements required limeade with a splash or two of vodka.  I happily obliged.

All finished!  It's much shinier than the old one.  And, most importantly, it's intact!

So we put everything back together, plugged it in and crossed our fingers as I switched it on.  It ran smoothly.  It did not blow up.  It did not catch fire.  I did a little happy dance.

Parts that were left over.  Only I think the beebee and the little screw looking thing were part of Samuel's collection that got lodged in the dryer some where.  Not sure about the washer.  That might have been part of his collection, too.

Now that is the complete saga of the busted dryer and how I took it apart and Paul helped me fix it.  We rock!