We're getting set to move in a couple of weeks and our Dryer decides it's a good time to quit. After all, we only have tons of things wanting washed as we prepare. Never fear, I place a call to my fav appliance repair man and leave him a message. He calls back, from Wyoming, where he's on vacation. That's not going to work, so I opt to try some DIY, hoping I'm physically up for the challenge (still working on recovery to pre-crisis level).
After some reading on the net, I took my nut driver to the critter and went straight for the high temp fuse, that seemed to be the most likely culprit. After a bunch of removed screws and an awful lot of "up/downs" I got the fuse and then discovered that my multimeter isn't in its box or anywhere else useful, so off to Sears Hardware, for a meter. I also learned that Sears doesn't stock spare parts for their Kenmore appliances, but I could order them online. Not so helpful.
After applying meter to fuse, I learned it was good, which was rather disappointing. So, something else was wrong, we started taking all the removable panels off and discovered a handy little guide to the dryer neatly packaged and secured to the machine's side panel. The INSIDE of the side panel, somewhere a consumer would only see if they were, like me, just taking things apart in hope of inspiration. Following my guide, step 2 isolated the problem as a bad heating element. A trip to an actual appliance parts store some more turning of screws and I was all done.
Oh, I forgot to mention, we cleaned the duct, which in our case is over 16 feet long and full of bends and lint and lint and more lint. We used a "LintEater Dryer Vent Cleaning System" from Lowes (~$45) which made the job amazingly easy. The thing has glowing reviews on Amazon, which turn out to be well deserved.
Once again, our dryer is working, and I am sooooo sore. That was a lot of work! I am looking forward to getting stronger, that wouldn't normally wipe me out.
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