[umniy]

I have a GE DBXR453ET3WW 12-year old electric dryer. It stopped tumbling; the motor is just humming when I turn it ON. First, I tried spinning the drum by hand: it turned very hard. Then I took the dryer apart, pulled the drum out and checked the belt, the pulley and the idler, the drum shaft and its rear bearing sleeve. Everything looks O.K, except for two top black drum slides, which are badly worn. Maybe that caused the drum spinning hard and I am going to replace them. The electric motor with a blower fan turns by hand O.K. I checked the belt tension switch for continuity by pulling on the idler bracket by hand: it works. All other micro switches checked O.K. too. I plugged the cord in, pushed the door switch and turned the knob ON with the drum out: the motor keeps humming, but not spinning. Now, I assume my motor is probably bad. On the other web sites they also suggested checking the capacitor, but I cannot find it. I know how capacitors look like and there seems to be no capacitor in my dryer. I’d like to make sure I checked everything before deciding to put a new motor for about $150 in the old dryer. Any insights? Thanks for the help.

[applianceman]

Open the door, press the door switch, have someone press start while you turn the drum by hand. If it starts drum starts after you do this stop it and try it normally (without turning the drum) if it still will not start on its own try this. Take the dryer back apart and blow the motor out with compressed air and vacuum it good. This may fix it and if it don’t the motor is bad.

If when you try and start the dryer while turning the drum it doesn’t start the motor is bad unless something is stopping the drum from turning freely.

http://www.appliance-repair-it.com/clothes-dryer-repair.html

[umniy]

Applianceman,
Good point about turning the drum and trying to start. Except, as I said the drum is out now and I tried starting just the motor itself with both the door switch and the belt tension switch pushed. I believe without a drum it should've started easy, since there is not much inertia resistance to spinning now. I could possibly try helping it starting by spinning the blower fan first. Something is telling me the motor is bad.

[applianceman]

The motor winding can be bad, the motor switch can be bad and the motor bearings can be bad. Since you tried it without a load you can eliminate the possibility of the drum being stuck. Also you have tried turning the blower by hand and it wasn’t stuck.

With that being said sometimes a piece of lint can get in between the motor switch and cause the problem you are having. This is why is suggested blowing out and vacuuming out the motor. In all likelihood the motor is bad but I have fixed a lot of dryers by just cleaning out the motor. I have also tried this on a lot of dryers and it didn’t work in which case I would replace the motor.

Attempting to start the motor by turning the fan will work but be careful that fan spins very fast I really don’t recommend trying it. I would say just try cleaning the motor as I described and if it doesn’t work replace the motor.