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!

The Dryer, Part 1

At some point in this calendar year my dryer quit.  I can't remember when it was.  January?  February?  It was definitely one of those because we're in March and it wasn't this month.  Beyond that, everything runs together.

Anyway, the dryer quit.  In the middle of a load of wet laundry.  With a load in the washer.  And at least 2 more waiting to be washed.  Of course the dryer would pick that day to quit.  That's the way dryer strikes work.

It was just before I had to pick up the kids from school so I packed up the wet clothes and hauled them to the laundry room at the apartment management office.  I didn't have any quarters so I tossed the wet clothes in the machines and looked around for a change machine.  There was none.  So I hoofed it to the manager's office and asked for change.  They didn't have any.  I may have muttered some not-so-nice words in the general direction of the unhelpful staff (they deserve it -- this place is a hole and they're incompetent like you wouldn't believe. I need to devote a post to that.).  I definitely stormed out, packed up my wet clothes and did a quick laundromat search for this ZIP code.  I found one.

But by then it was time to pick up the kids.  I called them and told them that I had to go to a laundromat and could they please walk home?  Fortunately it was a beautiful day and they took the opportunity to play at the various playgrounds between school and home.  I got the clothes dried at the laundromat (that has half a dozen change machines! Imagine that!) and came home just as the kids trooped upstairs, all tired out from their adventures in Playground Land.

Oh!  As I left the laundromat I was pushing one of those wheeled, stainless-steel baskets with the hanging bar at the top to the door so I could take my clothes out to the car.  One of the wheels stuck on the corner of a tile and the basket stopped.  I, however, did not.  I proceeded to slam my left cheekbone into the steel bar supporting my clothing.  I hit it so hard I bit my tongue and felt my teeth jar against each other.  I literally saw stars before I even figured out what happened.  Ow-flippin'-ouch!

I whined to Paul about my awful afternoon and he whined to me about his broken down car.  Yes, his transmission went completely kaput on the very same day and stranded him in downtown Denver with a big towing bill.  Not a spectacular day for either of us.  He proposed a couple of possible problems with the dryer and promised to help me with it.  I could not propose any problems with his car, nor could I promise to help with it.  But we shared some wine and commiserated together.

A couple of days later I'd managed to disassemble most of the dryer but I still wasn't sure what was wrong with it.  Needless to say, I had more laundry to do so I figured the best plan was to gather the essentials into one load and wash them at home, then take them to the laundry room here in the complex and dry them.  I would, of course, be sure to take my own quarters since the management here can't seem to maintain a change machine.

On the night I absolutely had to wash clothes it was snowing and dark and cold and windy.  I took the wet freezing clothes to the laundry room.  Guess what?  One of the dryers was locked up so that no quarters could be inserted.  The other one didn't work.  I know because I put 6 quarters in it and ended up with still-wet clothes 45 minutes later.  (Also, the laundry room is supposed to have 2 washing machines.  On the night I was there they only had one and it had an 'Out of Order' sign on it.  Oh, and the lights in the room didn't work so I was doing all this by the light of a broken soda machine.  Do you understand my muttered not-so-nice words a little better now?)  I then had to hike back to my car with 50+ pounds of wet clothes in the cold and snow.  And I slid in the snow and fell on my butt with the 50+ pounds of wet clothes landing on top of me.  I was reallyreallyreallyreally not happy.

When I got back upstairs I still had to have dry pants for everyone.  That meant picking out the essentials for everyone, hanging them up in my bathroom and turning a fan on them full-blast.  They were sufficiently dry for the next morning.  Thank heaven for small favors, huh?

Anyway, that's the story of the broken down dryer.  Actually, that's not all of it.  There's the whole ordeal of actually fixing it, which Paul and I did.  And I have pictorial evidence!  But that will have to wait for another post because it's now Miriam's bedtime and she's demanding her (rightful, promised) computer time.