Consider yourself fortunate if you have absolutely no idea what this is:
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| Note – Belt Properly Reinstalled |
If you do, I can now say I feel your pain. After a few laundry cycles that seemed to take 2-3-4x normal drying time I (finally) started getting a little worried. Call it a deficiency of being a male primarily responsible for the laundry room. To be completely sexist I’d suspect most gals would be irritated then concerned after the very first load gave some problems. Not me. For a couple of days I just pulled things out damp and hung them; figuring the recent cold snap was reeking havoc on the dryer. Fast forward to the problem solving.
We’re in that sweet spot where the machine is out of warranty (not a believer in buying extended warranties) yet considerably too new and nice to even consider replacing. After all, the one we replaced had to have twenty years on it. For less than a minute I considered calling up an acquaintance who repairs appliances for a living. Then I quickly moved on to figuring out where I could get a troubleshooting manual. A few keystrokes after entering the serial number I had my product manual; all 200 pages of it.
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| Dryer – Lower View Belt – Offtrack |
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| Samantha Confirms it’s a Nut, Not a Treat |
Once I settled on the likely cause I switched to looking up every DIY and related source I could find until one popped up with photos. Bingo; I’ve always been a fan of pictures. Necessary tools and a cold drink (to calm the nerves) in hand I started taking the thing apart. Several screws, bolts, yanks and a little sweat later the thing was in pieces and the problem could be confirmed. A belt had popped off likely due to a faulty nut tightened at the factory. Loose nut meant a belt went spinning off rendering the blower useless. At least that’s what the literature said it’d be, albeit in a more technical manner, and it was spot-on.
It took at least another 15 minutes before I figured out the missing nut thing—I couldn’t find it and needed to reference a couple documents to verify exactly how the belt was to be tightened. Easy part finished but it was a struggle to get the belt around the appropriately tightened nut. I see how errors were made at the factory. I had to pull out a bike tire iron as a wedge and I’d suspect the factory (this was assembled in Mexico) doesn’t carry a lot of tire irons.
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| Easy As Legos! |
With a little bit of time and a little more patience I’m continually surprised at how self-sufficient we can be. Much of our society has become little more than a race to get to –the next thing– so many of us fail to challenge ourselves, our daily routine. It’s good to take a few minutes to break the rhythm and find the loose nut ourselves instead of always calling on someone else.