Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Dryer Repair- Replacing the Multi Rib Belt (Whirlpool Part #341241)



January 2017.  Arrived down in Hawthorne to find that the dryer ran raggedly and then quit working altogether.  It is not the same model as this video, but the guts are the same except mirror-image, so it was infinitely helpful.  The problem was that I didn't have test equipment down here other than a gross circuit tester.  I surmised that the start relay may have burned out and ordered a new one.  When it came, I installed it, which was quite easy, but it didn't do the trick.  So I took off the front of the chassis, and a few panels in, I came upon the broken belt, which wraps around the entire drum and is driven by the motor.  While waiting for the new one to come, I watched this video a few times and tore the drum out, took off the manifold of the blower assembly, and removed the blower fins to expose the three screws that hold the body to the sheet metal behind it.  That all has to come off in order to feed the new belt around the motor drive shaft.  It is not open-ended like this one, but once all that stuff was off, it was essentially the same.  Strapped the front of the chassis to the ceiling, installed the new belt, got it onto the tensioner correctly, and jubilantly reassembled all the pieces I took out, having no parts left over.  Wasn't such a terrible job, and the dryer worked like a champ afterward.  The key was that the tensioner has a kill-switch on it that opens the line to the motor when the belt breaks, so that the motor doesn't just sit there and run open. 
Just like new.

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