No-Heat Dryer, check the obvious

Hi All,

Thought I'd share a story in the hopes that some will laugh with me, and others would hit this in the search engine and not make my mistakes.

Never troubleshoot a dryer without a multimeter unless you can see that the element is broken.

My Roper dryer had quit heating. I checked the fuse-box fuses visually of course. All fuses looked good. My multi-meter was broken and my wife anxious for a repair. Upon consulting the wiring diagram and various forums, I shotgunned the obvious coil/hi-temp/fuse. When that failed I replaced the operating thermostat. Failing that I replaced the timer.

Now 140 bucks into a broken dryer, I finally borrowed a good Fluke from a buddy and got to troubleshooting. Guess what? Red phase out, much to my surprise

The fuse (at the box) that looked perfectly un-blown proved to be perfectly dead to a voltmeter. And lots of known-good parts in the parts bin :-). Guess we'll keep this Roper around for a while.

All-in-all a learning experience and a lesson: A dryer will spin fine on 120. And fuses sometimes lie to the eye. And always have your multimeter around.

Cheers/Oldscout2 Beer 4U2

 

I repair dryers daily, After traring down a dryer and than finding no power you remember to check the power. Very easy to forget step 1 in the diagnosis.