Major appliances and you!
Aug. 19th, 2006 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogThanks to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thecoddess and her husband, I once again have a working dryer in our basement. Thank you both! And things go to my brother Tim too who helped me finish disassembling the old one, hauled it outside and into my truck with me, and helped get the new one down to occupy the thus-vacated space. I connected the gas and power lines, started it up, and woosh: hot air! This is cool.
Looking at the guts of the old one was really intersting: there were two seperate belts in it. One was for rotating the drum and the other was to drive a great big fan that sat behind the drum and blew air through it. None of the plans I've looked at on the web looked anything like it. We found too, as the two dryers were sitting next to each other, that despite the new one being an 'extra-large capacity' model, it would, except for the height, have fit entirely inside the shell of the old one with room to spare. That was a big dryer.
So, with both appliances sitting happily next to each other and the floor freshly cleaned around them, I figured I'd rewash the pile of clothes I'd has sitting down there waiting. I put soap in the washer, started the cycle, dumped clothes in, and watched. It filled all the way up and then... did... nothing. Here we go again.
Since it will still drain, I emptied it, took the back off, and looked in. The belt seemed to be stuck as the motor pulley rotated around, overheating and deforming one small length of it. I reached in and manually rotated the belt slightly and it began to work, albeit making a banging noise every time the bad section of belt hit the motor pulley. Then, after just a few minutes, it again broke and threw the belt.
I turned the machine slight on an angle to better see inside, and this time I was finally able to locate the source of the problem. The pulley wheel on the end of the motor spindle looked bent or warped. I reached in and poked at it and found that the upper half of the hourglass shape of the pulley was loose and would rattle and spin up and down the spindle.
Ok, cool! Now I know what the problem is. And how much could a cheap little part like that cost? It's just a little metal pulley wheel. Finally I was going to have this thing up and running! So I looked up the part on an appliance repair website. Ouch!! Over seventy dollars for a stupid little pulley wheel? I don't get it.
So I guess I have to think about whether I want to buy the part and attempt to figure out how to replace it and hope that nothing further is wrong with the motor or anything else, or I have to look into another new major appliance. Well, it's far from the end of the world, and I can spare a bit from the bonus check I just got to go toward a washer and still be able to use most of it toward procuring reliable transportation. I just want to stop having to go to the laundromat!
I think for now I'm going to wake Andrea up and see if she wants to go out for food with me. I owe my brother for the assist and I'm really craving some Chinese buffet.
thecoddess and her husband, I once again have a working dryer in our basement. Thank you both! And things go to my brother Tim too who helped me finish disassembling the old one, hauled it outside and into my truck with me, and helped get the new one down to occupy the thus-vacated space. I connected the gas and power lines, started it up, and woosh: hot air! This is cool.Looking at the guts of the old one was really intersting: there were two seperate belts in it. One was for rotating the drum and the other was to drive a great big fan that sat behind the drum and blew air through it. None of the plans I've looked at on the web looked anything like it. We found too, as the two dryers were sitting next to each other, that despite the new one being an 'extra-large capacity' model, it would, except for the height, have fit entirely inside the shell of the old one with room to spare. That was a big dryer.
So, with both appliances sitting happily next to each other and the floor freshly cleaned around them, I figured I'd rewash the pile of clothes I'd has sitting down there waiting. I put soap in the washer, started the cycle, dumped clothes in, and watched. It filled all the way up and then... did... nothing. Here we go again.
Since it will still drain, I emptied it, took the back off, and looked in. The belt seemed to be stuck as the motor pulley rotated around, overheating and deforming one small length of it. I reached in and manually rotated the belt slightly and it began to work, albeit making a banging noise every time the bad section of belt hit the motor pulley. Then, after just a few minutes, it again broke and threw the belt.
I turned the machine slight on an angle to better see inside, and this time I was finally able to locate the source of the problem. The pulley wheel on the end of the motor spindle looked bent or warped. I reached in and poked at it and found that the upper half of the hourglass shape of the pulley was loose and would rattle and spin up and down the spindle.
Ok, cool! Now I know what the problem is. And how much could a cheap little part like that cost? It's just a little metal pulley wheel. Finally I was going to have this thing up and running! So I looked up the part on an appliance repair website. Ouch!! Over seventy dollars for a stupid little pulley wheel? I don't get it.
So I guess I have to think about whether I want to buy the part and attempt to figure out how to replace it and hope that nothing further is wrong with the motor or anything else, or I have to look into another new major appliance. Well, it's far from the end of the world, and I can spare a bit from the bonus check I just got to go toward a washer and still be able to use most of it toward procuring reliable transportation. I just want to stop having to go to the laundromat!
I think for now I'm going to wake Andrea up and see if she wants to go out for food with me. I owe my brother for the assist and I'm really craving some Chinese buffet.
