Mr. Fix-it's At It Again

One annoying fact of life is that given enough time, every device breaks down. Some things, however, usually take so long to break that we take their ability to function for granted. Major appliances fall into this category. Unfortunately, these days when one of them breaks people usually do one of two things, both of which are rather expensive: they call a repair guy or they throw it out and buy a new one.

But not me.

I'm old school, which is ironic given my career as a computer programmer. I grew up in a house where things were replaced only once they were broken beyond repair. I remember taking our cabinet TV to the repair shop more than once, until its rather expensive power supply died. Our dishwasher was older than me and still in use to this day. It'll be replaced soon but only because the bottom is rusting out. Our dryer was even older and is also still in use. Every five years or so my Dad has to take it apart to fix a break in the heater coil but it doesn't cost anything.

Needless to say I absorbed a lot of the do-it-yourself attitude and this past weekend I put it to use again. You may remember back in December when I fixed an awful sound in our washing machine. This time it was the dryer's turn. One day Lori turned it on and it didn't produce any heat.

On Friday I was out but Bill came over to visit and started taking it apart. He determined there was nothing wrong with the heater coil, which was unfortunate because that meant the problem was not as obvious as I had hoped.
When I returned home we searched the Internet for a wiring diagram and once it was found, grabbed our multimeters and started tracing. First we started at the obvious points like the heater sensors but when they tested in working order we followed the schematic. Starting at the main power we worked our way along until we found a resistor near the controls that was reading zero continuity.

Problem identified!

But the celebration was short-lived. It turns out the resistor had such high resistance that our multimeters read it as a continuity break but when we settled down and actually tested its resistance it was in the proper 5 kΩ range. The hunt continued.

Eventually we found a sensor that looked like its connector had melted to it. In fact, it was the sensor's internals leaking out. It read zero continuity and infinite resistance. Problem identified! This time it was for real. Luckily Whirlpool is very organized and not only do they have part numbers on everything as expected, they also have all those parts catalogued on their web site available for direct order as well as a list of local parts dealers. The part I needed was listed at $31.96 so I called Reliable Parts and they said they could get it by Tuesday for the same price plus tax.

Tuesday couldn't come fast enough. When there's a baby in the house laundry becomes very important.

When Tuesday finally rolled around Lori picked up the part and I installed it. Success! We had our dryer back in working order and it only cost us $35 and some elbow grease.

Now it's just a matter of time before the next major appliance stops working.