Results tagged “Major appliances” from CLICK

It's not that I can't afford to have our major appliances professionally repaired (OK ... I really can't, but the fact that most clothes washers and dryers, dishwashers and stoves are so relatively easy to fix when compared to things like cars means that I mostly do this work myself.

Here's my record:

I've fixed our Maytag portable dishwasher (1980s vintage) three times: Broken drive belt, loose door hinge, worn-out water coupler.

I've fixed the Maytag clothes washer once: broken timer (that's an expensive repair, between $100 and $150 for the part).

And while I don't consider plumbing a "major appliance," since it isn't, I do quite a bit of plumbing work inside and out, unclogging drains, rebuilding leaky fixtures and replacing those fixtures.

Now our Maytag clothes dryer (can you tell that we like Maytag?), a gas-heating model, starts heating up but then stops heating after 10 minutes.

According to my appliance bible, the out-of-print-but-available-used "All Thumbs Guide to Repairing Major Home Appliances" by Robert W. Wood, the likely cause is one of the dryer's two thermostats.

Yes, it has two. Some dryers have more, the book tells me. This one has a "high-limit" thermostat and a "cycling" thermostat. Testing them will be a pain, and the problem could very well be with another part, perhaps one of two gas-valve coils, another class of part that could be responsible for a dryer that doesn't dry all that well (but does get a little bit hot at times).

How do I know all of this? A major source of help for me is Partselect, a Web site with diagrams for just about every appliance ever made, plus a list of all parts (and the opportunity to buy them, of course) and, even better, user reports of how problems were diagnosed and fixed.

Aside from searching for your specific model number, a great place to start is PartSelect's Free Repair Guide.

Another great resource is http://www.acmehowto.com, which has a great tutorial called "How to Fix a Gas Dryer." Clicking on the section about coils tells me that they're solenoids, meaning there are moving parts in there that very likely have gone bad.

Here's a very helpful section:

The easiest way to diagnose a problem in the burner assembly is to observe the burner operation. Remove the small access panel at the bottom, front of the dryer, select a high temperature setting and start the appliance. Watch the burner assembly, shortly after starting the dryer the ignitor should begin to glow. Next you should hear the click of the gas valve coil and a flame should ignite. The flame should be mostly blue and it should remain on for a minute or more.

If the ignitor glows for several seconds (up to 15 seconds) and then goes out, the problem is probably the coils (solenoids). If the ignitor glows and stays on, then the problem is usually the flame sensor. If it ignites and then quickly goes out, it is most likely a problem with inadequate air flow.

Test the coil for resistance using a multitester. Set the multitester to the ohms setting X10. Place a probe on each terminal. The multitester should change from a reading of infinity to roughly 1300 ohms (+/- 150 ohms) when the probes touch the terminals. If the reading is infinity or substantially different from 1300 ohms, the solenoid should be replaced.

I'm going to investigate, but this could be a complicated problem to diagnose. And with an older appliance, replacing more than one part at a time could quickly become a case of throwing good money after bad, and it could be time to give up and either call in a pro, or shop for a new dryer.

Coincidentally, my local source for parts when I do the work myself, and perhaps for the first time in a long time to do the work for me if I can't figure this out, is Authorized Appliance Parts and Service, 18450 Vanowen St. in Reseda. Their phone number is (818) 342-2055. I've blogged before about my experiences with this excellent local business here and here.

Another great place to find appliance parts via the Web is Midwest Appliance Parts, which has a great price on Maytag dryer coils (and lots of other stuff, naturally), and which provided the image of those very dryer coils above.