24
Took a chance on that advice from an old Maytag guy about dryer thermostats
I was working on a 6 year old dryer in West Kelowna last week that kept shutting off after 15 minutes. An old timer I know from the parts counter told me to check the cycling thermostat even though my multimeter said it was fine. Sure enough, I swapped it out and the dryer ran through a full load with no issues. Cost me $14 for the part instead of guessing and replacing the whole board. Has anyone else had a thermostat test good cold but actually fail under heat?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
black.wesley27d ago
Did you actually check the resistance on that thermostat while heating it up with a hair dryer or heat gun? I've been burned more times than I can count by thermostats that read fine at room temp but open up way too early once they actually hit operating temperature. The old Maytag guy probably knew that trick from back when those dryers had those simple mechanical timers and the thermostats were the only real brains in the machine. I keep a little heat gun in my truck now just for this reason, saves me from chasing ghosts on intermittent shutdowns. What was the actual temperature rating on the one you pulled out versus the one you put back in?
4
emmam3226d ago
Yeah @black.wesley brings up a good point but I gotta gently push back on one thing. Those mechanical timers on the old Maytag dryers weren't just simple timers, they actually had little motors inside that controlled the cycles based on temperature and time together. I've had a few of those timers themselves go bad and act like a thermostat issue. But yeah, heating up the thermostat with a heat gun while testing is the real pro tip. Pulled a thermostat off a Whirlpool once that was cracked on the bottom, still showed closed on the meter cold but opened up the second I hit it with heat.
0