[bryniehenry]

Hello, I have an older 80 series Kenmore electric dryer that I just bought. There is no heat and everything else is working. It worked fine at the house before until I used an old pig tail that was a 3 way instead of a 4 way that came with it. My house had a 3way so i didn't think it would hurt just wouldn't be grounded. I switched the pigtail back to a 4 way and rewired the house plug to match the 4way. I still have no heat. I checked the heating element and the wires are intact and not grounded out. I have 110 volts to each wire for the correct 220 volts and still no heat. Can an element quit working and still be in tact? Any ideas? Thanks Brynie

[denman]

A model number would be helpful

Hello, I have an older 80 series Kenmore electric dryer that I just bought. There is no heat and everything else is working. It worked fine at the house before until I used an old pig tail that was a 3 way instead of a 4 way that came with it. My house had a 3way so i didn't think it would hurt just wouldn't be grounded. I switched the pigtail back to a 4 way and rewired the house plug to match the 4way.
Not sure that I follow the above but I can say that not grounding a dryer is a VERY VERY bad idea. If a live wire shorts to the case/frame, it will be live and will not trip the circuit breaker. Touch it and lets say your tap and you then have voltage straight across your heart. May not kill you but someone with a heart problem or a kid may end up dead.

Unless you already had 4 wire cabling running to the plug or ran new cable from the electrical panel to the receptacle you still are not hooked up correctly.

If you should have a fire in this area and burn the house down, the insurance company could deny your claim because of this. Or at least give you a very hard time.

To me it would have made more sense to put a new 3 wire line cord on the unit. Then all you would have had to do is add a grounding strap from the unit's terminal's strip to the frame.

Perhaps the following will help.
http://www.applianceaid.com/electric...ting_tips.html
http://www.applianceaid.com/general.html#3to4

Can an element quit working and still be in tact?
No.
The coil is just a length of resistive wire so if it is in one piece and gets voltage across it, it should heat up

I still have no heat. I checked the heating element and the wires are intact and not grounded out. I have 110 volts to each wire for the correct 220 volts and still no heat.
First you have to fix your electrical hook up.
By the sounds of it you have a meter.
So measure the voltage at the plug
L1 to L2 should be 240 volts
L1 to Neutral and L2 to Neutral, both should be 120 volts.
If OK
Unplug the unit and check the wires at the unit's terminal strip to ensure they are properly connected and none of them have burned off
If OK
Plug the unit in and check the voltage at the terminal strip. This is just in case you have a bad line cord. Be careful 240 volts is lethal.
If OK
Unplug the unit and check the heating coil and thermostats etc. for continuity.
Heating coil, should be 12 ohms approximately.
Thermostats and thermal fuse/s all should be 0 ohms.

Be sure to disconnect one side of and device you are measuring this prevents reading an alternate/parallel circuit path. Also use your most sensitive ohms scale.
There is a good Sticky at the beginning of this forum on meter usage.