Last week I acquired a dryer. Said dryer worked until it was moved into my house. Now it will turn on with a horrible racket, heat up, and then shut off maybe 10 seconds later. I have opened it up and looked around inside, no wayward socks or lint balls.
Please give me good news that I can fix this myself!
When you say you looked inside, do you mean inside where you put the clothes or under the lid? There are only a few moving parts inside the dryer… the drum, a belt that goes around it and the pulley that drives the belt. I’d wager that one of these came loose. If that’s the case, it’s a simple fix.
Gas or electric?
What does the noise sound like, beyond “horrible racket”? Rattling, scraping, exploding… :eek:
I’d say the move did it. It either got bounced around or was not transported in an upright position. The drum has either come off the rollers or the belt is off. Still, to fix it required removing the top and dropping all the sides sometimes. This is easy. Search appliance sites for this disassemble info. Repairclinic.com comes to mind.
The first thing I’d do is try running it with the door open (with your finger on the button) just to see if something obvious is going on. Most likely you’re going to have to open it up. I’m going to guess the drum just got knocked out of place when you moved and hopefully you can just set it back where it belongs without too much trouble.
Also, if you could describe the racket, it might help.
Also, I wouldn’t continue trying to run it (other then for troubleshooting purposes) to avoid causing anymore damage.
We had it opened up, under the lid, drum pulled out, fingers bleeding.
Electric.
Ha, no exploding as of yet. It scrapes with a bit of “kathunk”
The drum spins fine when I try to turn it by hand. Ten seconds of dry time doesn’t help a whole lot, so it won’t be running much other than troubleshooting.
I had a dryer do something similar, turns out a screw had made through the wash in a jacket pocket, came out in the dryer and wedged itself between the drum and the rear panel, where the air comes in. Made a horrible racket and caused the drum to shift just enough that it was wobbly, so when it turned on it sound like a pair of shoes were in the drum.
If you’ve had it apart and nothing is obvious, I’d reccomend taking it apart again and double and triple checking everything is where it should be. Drum is sitting in the rollers properly and rollers aren’t damaged. Make sure motor isn’t damaged, etc. Electric dryer are easier to repair IMO, tho I’ve only taken apart one gas unit.
The fact that it shuts off after 10 seconds is strange. Does the motor have a cut-off that activates if it encounters too much physical resistance? That might be a place to start.
Electric? Do you mean it is arcing? Look for foreign objects near the heating coils.
I would suspect the internal fan that moves the air thru the dryer.
The fact that it stops after a while seems to indicates that the heating element overheats thus causing the shudown.
It’s hard to tell from your description exactly what is going on. Is the belt intact and in place around the drum? When you spin the drum by hand, does the belt move and does the motor/fan move with it?
Most dryers that I’ve taken apart in recent years have the blower fan attached to the motor at the bottom. If it isn’t blowing, or if the tubing that routes the air from it over the heating elements has been dislodged, then the heating elements are going to overheat fairly quickly and trip the thermal cutoff.
Where is the kathunk sound coming from, the drum or the motor?
ETA: If the exhaust vent is blocked by something, that can also cause overheating fairly quickly. If the exhaust duct was dislodged in the move it might be hitting the drum causing the kathunk.
Almost two months later (we have been drying our laundry on the clothesline) we acquired a new dryer, nothing seemed to fix the old one and prior to this incident was taking longer and longer to dry.
Same problem happened with the new dryer. We narrowed it down then to the electricity current going into the dryer. Called the electrician, and now the 2nd dryer works perfectly!
Yippee for fluffy towels again!!
Thanks to all who offered help and sorry for the delay.