Category: Home Ec

Our ancient Sears Kenmore electric clothes dryer (which is not matched to the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned HE3 washer) started squeaking again. The last time it did that, I tore it apart and determined that the rear seal between the drum and the back panel needed replacing; I ordered the seal, buttoned up the dryer, and, amazingly, the squeak Went Away.

The box with the new seal arrived a few days later and has been perched atop the dryer for the last few months. Never borrow trouble, sez I.

Unlike the HE3 washer, tearing the dryer down isn’t a big deal. Two screws secure the lint trap enclosure to the top panel; be careful about not dropping them down the chute.

Then push the top forward and pry it off the clips holding it in place. You do not need to remove what looks like clips holding the top to the back panel; they’re sort of hinges that let you tilt the top back. With any luck, you can let the top hang; I rested it on the nearby laundry sink.

Two screws hold the entire front door panel in place. Before you remove those, disconnect wires from the door latch switch so you can remove the front panel. The alert reader will note I didn’t do that…

The drum has two sliding seals that bear on the front and rear panels. There is nothing else holding the drum in place, so when you remove the front panel, the drum falls out. It’s helpful to have an assistant holding the drum in place, perhaps with a hand through the open door, while you jockey the front panel out of the way.

Have your assistant continue to hold the drum while you memorize the path of the drive belt around the tensioner and motor pulleys. This is not obvious: you don’t have to take the tensioner pulley off the shaft to remove or install the belt.

There are two sets of slots in the dryer base plate that could hold the tensioner. Only one set will work. Pay attention to the situation in your dryer.

Hint: the drum rotates counterclockwise as you view the front of the dryer. The motor pulls the belt off the drum and the tensioner acts on the slack side of the belt. If you try rotating the drum clockwise, the tensioner and motor make graunching noises that will convince you something has gone terribly wrong. It hasn’t, you’re just turning the drum the wrong way.

With the drum out, this is what the old seal looked like:

I cut the threads at the seam holding the ends of the old seal together and peeled it off the drum. That reveals the dried adhesive all around the drum.

I applied xylene to soften the adhesive, then used a razor knife and a vast quantity of rags to remove the goo. The key is to get enough xylene on the adhesive to get its attention without slobbering solvent all over the drum; it will soften the paint, which is a Bad Thing. Do this in the garage or outdoors to enhance Family Harmony.

I did a trial fit of the new seal, which showed it’s a snug fit and requires careful alignment. A dozen small clamps held successive parts in place while I got it settled. The trick is to position the center part of the T-shaped seal against the rim of the drum without wrinkles. You probably can’t get it right without a dozen clamps.

To apply the adhesive, I removed two clamps, eased that section of the seal off the rim, and ran two beads of adhesive: one along the rim where the previous adhesive had been and a smaller bead just below the folded metal edge. That pretty well smeared out as I eased the section back in place.

Then remove the next clamp, ease that section off the rim, apply adhesive, and iterate all the way around.

I dug a patched bicycle tube out of the drawer and eased it under the clamps around the drum, then pulled it mildly taut all the way around to apply uniform pressure to the seal. Two larger clamps held the slack ends in place.

After supper, we declared the adhesive (which looks & smells a lot like plain old contact cement) to be cured. Off came the clamps and tube and, lo and behold, it’s all good.

Reassembly is in the obvious reverse order. The instructions packed with the seal remind you to ease the loose end of the seal outside the drum where it can ride on the back panel. Make it so.

While your assistant holds the drum in place, reinstall the tensioner and route the belt around it. The belt in our dryer has two possible positions on the pulley (it has ridges), so I made sure it was tracking in the same position as before.

Attach the front panel, rotate the drum a few times to be sure everything is in place and tracking correctly, then slam the top, screw it down, and you’re done!

Quite some years ago, the spot weld holding half of the handle to the side of my all-time-favorite 1/3-cup measuring cup broke loose. The minuscule weld nugget suggested that the spot welder got distracted; the weld on other side of the handle is perfectly bonded.

I tried repairing it with silver solder and a torch, which simply proved that’s not within my skill set. I buffed off most of the residue and applied JB Weld epoxy, which lasted just fine until a few days ago. It’s a low-stress situation, indeed, but I’m not surprised that the epoxy didn’t really bond to a slightly scuffed stainless steel surface.

So, this time around, I did it right: sandpapered off the epoxy, scuffed up the cup and handle by shoe-shining a sandpaper strip face up and face down in the gap, then silver-soldered the handle in place using my resistance soldering gadget (which I promise to describe some day).

The setup was straightforward. Clamp the cup in the bench vise with soft copper jaws (hammered from ordinary pipe) that also grip one electrode from the soldering unit.

I used a strip of fancy Brownell’s Silvalloy 355 silver solder ribbon (which is 56% silver instead of the chintzy 4% junk I normally use) with some truly toxic silver solder flux. About ten seconds of heat melted the solder and produced a pair of nice fillets along the sides of the handle.

The flux washed off in hot water and a few licks with fine sandpaper cleaned things up just fine. The carbon electrode left a bit of schmutz on the handle, but nothing a Dremel brass brush wheel couldn’t solve.

The inside has a bit of heat discoloration, but the sandpaper knocked that back reasonably well, too.

The final product looked a lot better than these in-work pictures, but it’s tough to photograph subtle differences in a shiny silver object.

Anyhow, as you might expect, we value function over form in this household.

The discussion following that post prompted me to take a closer look at the corroded spider. I planned to pull the spider off the back of the drum and examine the pieces, but a week of dribbling thread lube around the bolts left two of them firmly affixed.

While I don’t have it completely apart yet, some observations are in order…

The bolts are stainless steel and utterly immovable with the usual screwdriver-handle-mounted Torx bit. I got the first two bolts out by putting a T30 bit in a 1/4-inch socket in a ratchet wrench and applying brute force.

A few days of thread lube (the incomparable PB B’Laster) persuaded two more out of their lairs. The remaining bolts may require even more brute force, but I’ll give the lube a few more days to work its magic.

Despite that, the bolts and holes are not corroded. They may have some thread locker down in there, but I see little evidence of that. I think it’s just a case of being torqued down hard, then set adrift in ionic water for half a decade.

The outer third of each arm has a covering of corrosion products, but the metal below that (now dried and flaking) gunk seems undamaged. The arms have severe corrosion and cracking throughout the inner two-thirds of their length.

If this were chemical corrosion, I’d expect it to apply evenly throughout the length of the arm, because the presence of corrosion products over the entire arm indicates pretty good distribution.

However, galvanic corrosion should follow the same pattern, so I’m not sure what to make of this.

The fact that an oxidation layer on the stainless steel tends to passivate it may not really matter. Compare the surface areas of the drum and the spider: there’s a whole lot more drum than spider, so even a passivated drum could provide enough current to rot the spider.

The ends of the spider spend their lives whipping through the water inside the tub at a pretty good clip. That could dislodge most of the crud and leave them reasonably clean, at least compared to the hub that moves more slowly (same rotational speed, smaller radius). It’s also true that the water level never reaches the hub, remaining below the level of the door seal.

Thus, the hub probably gets splashed, but never immersed, and thus has no way to remove any contaminants. The corrosion products simply build up there, keeping it wet throughout its life.

I maintain there’s little drying going on, even with the door open, in the relatively short intervals between washings. The hub region would be least likely to dry, however, because there’s absolutely no ventilation back there.

All that notwithstanding, this corrosion should not happen.

I’d very much like to see some measurements: we’re all obviously guessing at the conditions. The plastic tub surrounding the drum has a port for the rear vent near the perimeter, so it’s possible to get a (cramped, inconvenient) look in there without tearing the washer apart.

More later, after I get the mumble thing apart…

Half a year after replacing the O-rings on the kitchen faucet, it’s dribbling again. This time, the symptom looked like a leak from the top of the faucet, which implied the three O-rings on the Spacer plate rather than big O-rings that seal the spout.

You can see the O-rings look different on the old and new spacers …

Indeed, the old O-rings are flattened out. It’s most visible over on the right edge of the lower ring; the top ring is new.

Replacing them is no big deal; follow the directions in the earlier post to get everything apart. But: only half a year?

Here’s a view of the diverter on the back of the column.

Notice that the larger O-rings that seal the spout to the column had glued themselves to the column and left shreds when I removed them. A narrow strip of Scotch-Brite scouring pad, applied shoe-shine style, cleaned the O-ring debris off the column and made it nice & shiny. I suppose as long as they slip freely on the spout, then it’s all good, but there are new ones in place now.

I used a bit more silicone grease on the O-rings this time; we’ll see if that makes it better or worse.