Sears gas clothes drier

[philo]

Due to several problems and the fact that it's 20 years old I purchased a new clothes drier.

Kind of curious though as what the problem is with the old one. I do my own repairs and this one stumped me.

The gas only comes on intermittently. I can see the igniter glowing but most of the time, there is no gas present.

Sometimes it will ignite but after a few minutes goes out again.

The timer and thermal breakers all check ok. I'm thinking it must be the solenoid that actually turns the gas on.

I did not think it worth investigating because half the time the drum sticks...I got my $400 worth.

[trader_4]

Sounds most likely. Did you see if there was voltage on it when it goes out?

[gfretwell]

Sounds more like the thermocouple.

[philo]

No. Not easy to get to. If I was set on fixing it I would check though

[philo]

I'd have to do more disassembly to get to that.

I am curious but not quite curious enough to disassemble the drier any more.

[Tekkie®]

[e-mail] posted for all of us...

I agree

[gfretwell]

Set it on the curb and forget about it then ;-)

[Vic Smith]

No. Like "bleeding" anything else, you're dealing with a positive pressure against atmospheric pressure. The atmospheric can't overcome the positive. But I've never had to "bleed" air out of natural gas lines. The appliance does that. A 20 year old dryer probably has a pilot light. That's connected at the gas valve, so lighting the pilot serves to bleed out the gas line when it's been disconnected. With more modern dryers, a few repeated lighting cycles will do the same.

[philo]

I'd need help to get it out of the basement, they will haul it away for $20 Delivery is free

>

[trader_4]

Except that you can't light the pilot light until the air comes out of the line first. If it's 50 ft of 1" pipe that was worked on, that could take awhile and if you're a plumber, the customer isn't going to like you sitting there with your butt crack showing for hours, running up the bill. For a homeowner, I guess if you want to wait and monitor it, the gas will eventually get there.

[gfretwell]

I know it was almost a half century ago but when the "gas man" did the initial start up of our house he used a propane torch to trick up the thermocouple and set the furnace to come on. The main burner valve opened and a few seconds later the thing lit, same with the water heater. The range did not monitor the pilot light so that was even easier. He just turned a burner and waited until he smelled gas and lit it with a match. This was with empty pipe all the way to the regulator/meter outside, maybe even to the street.

[philo]

I was just commenting to my wife how convenient it is to shop on-line. The new dryer was purchased without me having to leave the house.

Now I don't know what will happen as my card was hacked during the transaction. Since the transaction went through my guess is there is some dishonest employee at the store's headquarters.

Anyway the transaction went through but was never posted to my card. However, several bogus transactions were posted at that time.

My credit card company immediately cancelled my card, reversed the transactions and issued a new card.

Guess I will wait an see what the store does.

I still do not want to fool around with my old dryer though. The entire front needs to be removed to get at the gas assembly. My previous Sears dryer which was almost identical had an access door.