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Spent 2 months chasing a laundry room ghost that turned out to be one loose screw in the dryer
I want to share a story that fits this community because it took me 2 months to finish and I almost gave up around week 5. Our dryer in the house we rent in Wichita started making this faint squeak every 3rd or 4th load, and at first I figured it was the belt. I watched maybe 6 hours of videos, replaced the belt, then the drum rollers, then the idler pulley, and each swap cost me a Saturday and about $40 in parts. My wife kept saying just buy a new one, but I was convinced I could solve it, so I pulled the whole thing apart 4 separate times and laid the parts out on a piece of cardboard. The squeak only showed up when the drum was warm, which is why it fooled me for so long, since a cold spin in the garage was always silent. Around week 7 I sat on the floor and just ran it with the front panel off, and I heard a tiny rattle coming from a screw on the blower housing that had backed out maybe an eighth of an inch. I tightened it with a nut driver, put everything back together, and it has run quiet for 3 weeks now. So my question is, does anyone here have a story like this where the real fix was way smaller than the hunt, and how do you stop yourself from throwing parts at a problem?
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eva_lewis7d ago
Man, I felt this one in my bones. My dishwasher did the same thing to me last year, made a grinding noise only when it hit the drain cycle, and I replaced the pump, then the motor, then the float switch, all because I never once thought to check the little plastic guard that had cracked and was rubbing the spray arm. Two months, probably $120 in parts, and the actual fix was a $6 piece of plastic I found by accident while I was cleaning up. The worst part is my wife was right the whole time when she said to just call someone, but by week three it stopped being about the machine and started being about proving I could beat it. What finally saved me was timing myself, I gave each step a 20 minute cap, and if I could not find the source by then I had to stop and think instead of ordering more parts. Also helps to run the thing half apart like you did, because a warm part will tell you way more than a cold one ever will.
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