Clothes dryer hesitating
 

Got a Kenmore clothes dryer. It's hesitating. It works but periodically it acts as if the electricity cuts off a split second and then comes back on again. It's not a predictable pattern but it's frequent. It also makes a thump when it stops and starts. Anybody have a diagnostic hypothesis?

Fairly easy to check:
Loose wire terminal where power cord enters back of dryer, or wire connections to power outlet? TURN OFF POWER BEFORE CHECKING ! <big grin>

Harder to check:
Bad/failing switch contact(s)
Bad/failing relay contact(s)

go buy a new one.

Obviously unfamiliar with the character of the original poster.

If it is an older dryer then check on the back for some round looking things with wires going in one side and coming out the other. These are heat sensors of some kind and they, among other switches and such, tell the machine when to run and when to stop.

If one of them fails you will get this type of action since it is telling the machine to stop, then to start, then to stop.....

But the good thing is that it is a Kenmore. This means you can go online and buy for just a few bucks a repair guide for your machine.

These are not complicated devices, at least the older ones are not. And if you have a voltmeter and a phillips head screwdriver you can almost fix anything on them.

For our Kenmore, (20 year old gas dryer), there was a neat little wiring diagram tucked inside of the little control board on the top... it was especially useful because I couldn't find a manual online (Idle, do you have a link to the manuals you reference?).

Also, here is a washer/dryer/dishwasher collector forum -- you might get some results by posting there? I don't know how active it is.

The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

They do have some cool pictures of the "Old Aberdeen Farm", a giant and now gone appliance junkyard.

http://www.automaticwasher.org//COLL...f%20Dreams.jpg

And the good news is that now they appear to be free!

Have your model number ready. You will need to enter it to get the correct information.

Dryer DIY Repair Help & Troubleshooting | Sears PartsDirect

I love you, man.

Is the dryer hesitating when you press the starter button or while it's already running?

If it's immediately when the button is pressed, I would look at the button. If it hesitates intermittently when it's running, I would look at the belt safety switch that keeps it running after the initial press of the starter button and also shuts it down in the event of a belt break. If the belt has stretched, it may also be bouncing around, turning the unit off and on depending on the laundry load in the machine at the time.

I've owned Kenmore appliances in the past, and only hesitation that I've ever experienced is to buy another.

Not when the button is pressed but intermittently. Any idea where that belt safety switch might be. It does sound like it's bouncing around when it turns off.

I'd be looking at the door-closed switch, as well. Intermittent contact there could be your culprit.

I've always found that dryer problems require left brain solutions. So yes, the door switch may be triggering the stop. But the reason may be that a bearing is allowing the drum to put pressure on the door. Or it could be that a shorted heating coil is fooling the thermosensor into thinking the wash is dry. Or a clogged exhaust is causing a safety to shut it down. Or a belt is slipping and making the machine think it's stalled.

When she says "can you look at the dryer," I always begin by taking out the drum and correcting any obvious problems, even if they seem unrelated. Then reassemble and see what happens.

The belt switch is generally on the side of the motor. The belt loops around the drum and then makes a "S" curve over an idler pulley before it loops around the motor pulley and back to the drum.

You have to take the top/front/side shell off the unit to get to any of the internals. Not a big job if you have room to move it around to access all the screws.

If you go to all that trouble, you might as well replace the belt while you're in there.

I finally got around to disassembling it. I found a problem though exactly how and why it was causing the symptoms is not clear to me. The blower fan was loose on the motor shaft. No real way to get it off and replace it since the cage is plastic welded around the blower. There are splines on shaft and blower fan which engage the two and the fan was slipping inwards and disengaging the splines. So I just pulled it into position and put a lot of epoxy on the end of the shaft and the blower to hold it in place on the splines. I'm pretty skeptical about that being a permanent solution but it might work for an hour or two. :) I thought a similar thing when I epoxied a crack in a hot water radiator 30 yrs ago and it's still going fine. The only other option was a new motor/fan/blower assembly which I assume is pretty pricey so not worth it. I'll keep an eye out for a used dryer.

Got it back together and turned it on empty. Seems to work fine now so it appears to have been the source of the problem. Whether the fix will hold up is another issue.

Seems like cause and effect work differently for dryers. Try E-Bay for a motor, there are a lot of machines parted out there.

What is the model #?

417-83142201

I've now figured out that the replacement is a blower assembly which comes with the fan captured inside and the motor mounts to it. I think I have a spare assembly since I kept the parts from my former dryer which was the same model. So if the epoxy doesn't hold up, I should be able to swap in the whole blower assembly. But so far I've run one load thru it and its running smooth as silk.

When I did the epoxy repair I didn't realize the motor could separate from the blower assembly and I knew the motor on my old dryer was bad so I didn't think I could swap motor and blower assembly in.

important too,is twice a year pull out the dryer.Remove hose and vacuum out good.Dryers have burned down more homes.