Dryer Repair 101

A few days ago our dryer stopped working and my husband reluctantly took it apart to see if we could figure out what was wrong. We had already purchased a belt hoping it was something simple like that. While at Lowe's to get the belt, we looked at new dryers. Of course, the one that my husband "selected" was over $1000. I saw one for less that $500 that looked good to me but it still did not have a much capacity as the current commercial capacity dryer that I have. I didn't see anything that I wanted more than the dryer that I have.

At one point a year or so ago, my husband was able to fix our dryer by removing a sock that somehow made it's way outside the drum. This time, however there was no sock and the belt looked okay.

I was surprised that the inside of our dryer (Amana Speed Queen Commerical Capacity Dryer) was really simple -- there is a drum, and a motor, several wheels, and a belt.

Once we took the drum out, we discovered a wheel that was broken. Not only did the wheel look like it would be easy to replace, we found out that we could order it online for $4.32 plus shipping. Even better, we found a place in Dallas (Appliance Part Depot) that had the part. When I went to the parts place, I decided to buy other parts that might need to be replaced on the dryer. Tim, the rep that waited on me, gave me good information, and was so helpful. We spent $80 on parts and were able to not only fix our dryer ourselves and save some money, we are feeling sooo green. While the dryer was taken apart, we cleaned it thoroughly. There was a lot of dust and grime and I can't imagine that anyone who we would have called out to repair it, would have taken the time to clean it so well.

My nine year-old dryer is now running so quietly and even has a light inside! I guess the light had been burned out for so long, I forgot that it even had one. There was a squeak I had gotten used to and now I understand where the squeak was coming from. It took us (75% of it was done by my husband) about three hours to do the repair and $80 in parts (9 separate parts were replaced) and even though I would have rather been doing something crafty, it was so gratifying to be able to fix it, learn something, and to be able to save so much money... not to mention the earth.