I'm asking here because I assume some of you are expected to perform this sort of "man of the house" style duties.

I've tried to explain "I'm not the man, I'm the big drooly Labrador Retriever who's not housetrained" but they won't listen.

We have a Maytag LDE8424ACE dryer. It started making annoying noises. I was able to find out the blower wheel was broken, and replace it. Put it back together, and it's much quieter.

But now it won't spin unless you put a tiny load in.

If you look at the picture at Appliantology, this is reminiscent of what my dryer looks like from the back. The difference is that the white wheel (and attached parts) are rotated about 45 degrees to the left-- the result is that the belt which goes to the top-right is basically in contact with the belt as it wraps around the bronze/brass wheel.

Obvious solution: Rotate the white wheel assembly 45 degrees right. It fails-- if I hook that spring back up, it slips back to the original position. Also, if you're looking at the assembly with the wheel in the "right" position, there's like 3cm of slack in the belt, which can't be good.

Has anyone had a similar problem? Any advice, other than the "Never, ever buy a Maytag product again" I've already decided on (the matching washer sprung a massive leak several years ago).

I almost wonder if the correct remedy would be to replace the whole damn belt, which may have been stretched by our comical attempts to hold the dryer together while working on it-- perhaps a new one would be tight enough to hold the white wheel assembly in the right position.

I *hate* belts in all their forms-- anything which has a belt for drive could just as well be done with a gear-chain and less

If you have slack in the belt, check to see if something isn't siezed. That spring should be keeping tension on it. If the tension mechanism seems to move freely and it's the spring that's stretched, try shortening it by cutting a little off and rebending the end into the proper hook. If you're just all out of tension adjustment, new belt is in order.

BTW, not everything with a belt sucks:



That's a Spot Brand belt drive bike. The belt saves weight and requires no lubrication.

call the maytag repair man???

Up front, I'll admit I know less than nothing about washers and dryers, except how to use them... never really thought of modding one, so...

What I do know is funny, though, and that quote about a drooly Lab is going up in the Quotes Thread...

Do what u can to try and fix it, and if you break it you have a good reason to buy another.

My old washer and dryer gave me lots of problems so i replaced them with a Fisher&Paykel set that is awesome, Got them both at a scratch and dent deal for $600 w/ a 3year warranty. They are just as efficient as the front loads at home depot and the washer is direct drive which means less sh!t to break on it. The dryer is auto balancing and instead of it spinning in one direction the whole time it changes every so often and goes each way the same amount of time during the cycle to prevent the cloths from getting tangled up or ripped. Elite of the washers and dryers in my book.

In my earlier post I made a tragic guy mistake: focused on fixing the technical problem instead of looking at the bigger picture.

There's a few things to consider here:

-If you do manage to fix the dryer, guess who's gonna be the dryer repairman from here on out? Sometimes it pays to show some incompetence so you don't get stuck with the crap jobs. (Drywall? I know nothing about drywall...)

-If your old units are giving you trouble, chances are that situation isn't going to improve. We replaced our W&D with frontloaders, and although we didn't want to spend the money either, with the electric, gas and water savings with the much more efficient units, they've paid for themselves already.

-If Momma ain't happy, nobody happy. Let's face it, washers, dryers and dishwashers are power tools still mainly used by women. Not trying to be sexist there, but if I used a power tool every single day, man or woman, I'd be much happier if it was a good tool.

-Whether you do it yourself, call a pro or replace...wouldn't you rather be doing something else you actually enjoy than messing with wonky appliances?

Quote: Originally Posted by Wordbiker If you have slack in the belt, check to see if something isn't siezed. That spring should be keeping tension on it. If the tension mechanism seems to move freely and it's the spring that's stretched, try shortening it by cutting a little off and rebending the end into the proper hook. If you're just all out of tension adjustment, new belt is in order.

My running theory:

-The belt is stretched/worn.
-The tension adjuster doodad with the white wheel can pull all the way to the left, causing the belt to rub against the motor shaft (brassy wheel)

There's no way to say "I want 20% more tension" without wrecking the spring, and it would only pull the mechanism further to the left. I think we need something providing *counter-tension* (pulling it to the right)-- which may be a tighter belt.

Further details: A disassembly-reassembly resulted in slow to no drum movement, depending on load. The slow motion would be slowest in regular intervals (as the load approached a tip-over point perhaps?

What did result in improved performance was inserting a socket in the path of the belt, thus extending the path a centimetre or two and adding more tension; the drum began to pick up.

This seems to validate my original theory.

At this point, our outlay is:

20.- for blowerwheel
10.- for blowerwheel removal tool (proved unnecessary)
20.- to ask someone else to look at it and claim it was fine but fail to recognize it doesn't work with actual clothes in it
10.- for a new belt likely.

I'm fairly certain it would have been cheaper to just buy a few old Netburst P4s and dry our clothes over them. But then you'd insist they Fold....

Schwinn actually made a prototype Stingray in the 60's that used belt drive.

I dont know if this tip will be practical for you or not, because I dont know how thick the belt is, but I once fixed a dry by replacing the belt......with a lawn mower belt. They were pretty much the same thickness but they were spot on the same size diameter, so I used that and it cost me about 3 bux, as per hoping that you can even get the right belt from maytag and paying more for it.

Just take the old belt to an auto parts store and tell em to find you one thats about that size. If they cant find one, well hell all you wasted was your time, and than you can run down and buy the more expensive piece of crap that already failed once.

I don't see why it can't be a drive-chain. Yeah, it will be louder, but it will be indestructible.

The chain-drive on our garage-door opener is approaching 20 years of age, schleps a hundred kilos of metal up and down several times a day, and shows only one minor flaw (in specific temperature ranges, it will droop to a height where it fouls another part of the mechanism)

I'm going to agree that its the belt. If the belt were new/no stretched, you would be sitting there swearing at the thing trying to get the belt on. The belt should have NO slack, and should be pulled very very tight by the tension pully.

To further diagnose, throw a load in with the cover off. You should see the belt moving, but the drum not moving.

If a new belt doesn't fix it, then a new spring for the tension pully is in order. Yeah, you could modify the spring, but a new one would do you better.

If the belt is bearly moving, then you are looking at a new motor.

Yeah, I hate dryers.