Our dryer stopped working last week. It would heat things up but it didn’t spin anymore, so the clothes just turned from a cold wet lump to a warm wet lump. As head of the household, it was my duty to repair it.
I haven’t fixed a dryer before, but no time like the present to learn. At best it saves us $100+ for a service call, at worst it delays the service call and annoys the technician who would have to undo my mistakes in addition to fixing the original problem.
I got the top off the dryer fairly easily – two screws. The side was a little trickier, but once I got that out of the way it was obvious what the problem was because the broken drive belt was right there. I pulled it out and went to the hardware store. Five dollars later, I was home with a new belt. I took the old one into the store and compared it to the new one to make sure it was the right length before I bought it.
Getting the belt on was an adventure. I couldn’t just wrap it around the drum from the side, so I had to take off the front of the dryer. With 3 sides out of 6 off the dryer, it gets rather wobbly. I slipped the belt over the drum and then put the front back on. The belt was around the drum and I found the motor easily, with its pulley open so the belt just slid on there too.
Side note: if you ever have to take a dryer apart for anything, take your Shop-vac with you and clean out all the lint that has found its way inside the dryer.
Side side note: I don’t know that I would have messed with a gas dryer, as tinkering doesn’t always go well with flammable gasses. Our dryer is electric, which is easy to work around because you just unplug it.
Back to the story…
It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get the belt around the tensioner pulley too. Tip: the tensioner is going to make the belt really really tight, so you’ll have to push the tensioner down more than you expect in order to get the belt on it.
I couldn’t test it before putting the dryer back together, as the drum won’t stay in place without the front panel secured, which needs the side panel fastened back on. At least I was able to leave the top off. When that was accomplished, I plugged in the dryer and turned it on. It worked! First time, too. The drum was spinning smoothly and it was blowing hot air. So I put the top back on, buttoned everything down, and put the wet laundry that had been patiently waiting in the washer into the dryer. I turned the dryer back on and it didn’t spin.
I took the top back off and spun the dryer. I was heavy but it moved. I took the laundry out and turned it on and it spun. The belt was looser than I remembered, so I took the side panel off and saw the tensioner pulley was caught and wasn’t able to pull the belt all the way tight. I freed the pulley and the belt was tight again, so I put the side back on the dryer and tried it. It worked fine, so I put the top back on and started it, only to stop it because it was making a horrible scraping sound.
Ugh.
I did not want to take the dryer apart again, so I took the top off and tried to hear where the sound was coming from. Looking down at the front of the tub while it was spinning, I noticed the dryer wasn’t square. So I pushed on the diagonals to square it up, relative to the drum. That made the scraping sound stop, so I put the top back on, which made the scraping sound start up again. I took the top back off and maneuvered the dryer until the scraping stopped.
So now if you stop by our house and see our dryer, you’ll notice the top is resting on the dryer but not fastened down, with a large-ish gap between the front of the top and the rest of the dryer. Please don’t try to help fix it by pushing down on it, as then I’ll just have to fix it again.
God did so that night; for it was dry only on the fleece, and dew was on all the ground.
Judges 6:40
This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
