My frigidaire dryer was making a really loud scraping noise that would stop if we turned the fridge on its face (where the door is). It would dry forever turned on its face without scraping but would only last about 20 minutes sitting upright before the noise began.. then it would get louder and more frequent until it was unbearable.

We pulled the thing apart and it appeared that our rear drum bearing (the shaft piece) was not sitting properly against the back of the drum, as though it had been warped and therefore the dryer was spinning off kilter... Also, there was a hole that had worn through the bottom of the white plastic piece that holds the knob of the shaft and the ball bearing.

We went ahead and bought that part and replaced it... However, when we got everything back together and turned it on, it immediately started making a constant lighter pitched but less severe scraping noise (a new sound). We pulled it apart again and found that the heating coil on the heating element is broken in a few places... (Probably our fault as we hadn't unplugged it when we first started taking it apart and we definitely saw sparks before we got smart enough to remove the power source) The coil clearly needs to be replaced (in fact the whole element is kinda mishapen -probably from the drum spinning oddly for so long) , the coil no longer extends the entire way around the element and only connects to the wiring on one end. Also, one of the plastic connectors that was holding the coil in place is broken.. causing the coil to stick up (likely the cause of our scraping noise) We did try to tighten the coil enough that it wouldn't stick up but without that connector we arent sure if that will work.

Here's the problem... We didn't have the part to fix it so in order not to lose pieces or leave the thing sitting around in pieces, we put it back together again.... once we got it back together my husband wanted to hear the sound one more time, but the dryer now will not turn on at all... Its definitely getting power because I stupidly reached my hand in there and touched on of the connectors and got a little shock... (we had plugged it back in and again, did not unplug it, we simply lifted the top panel to see if we perhaps forgot to connect something.. but from the top, we could see nothing disconnected.)

Before I spend ANOTHER 75.00 I would like to know if we've broken this thing completely or if its worth a shot.. at this point... is it better just to get a new machine? or is this still a simple fix (assuming we stop breaking things as we're fixing other things)

Thanks!