I was just given a broken Kenmore dryer. I was told the problem was that it would no longer heat up to dry the clothes. And I didn't question it any further.

So, I open the machine up thinking that all I will have to do is change out the heating element and it will be back in business. BUT, after looking at the wiring situation it appears that someone had previously done some type of repair job. There are no wires going into the high-limit thermal fuse. There is a repaired wire that goes into the thermostat and then loops into the heating element as it should. The rest of the wiring seems fine.

My question is, was this machine working without the thermal fuse wire connection? Or was this wire repair some type of misguided attempt to fix what the previous owner thought the problem was?

Can a dryer even work without the thermal fuse connection? I'm out of my league here and would really appreciate any insights I could get.

I've attached a picture to try to show what I'm talking about.

Wow thank you. That clarified pretty much everything for me.

I just cut the electrical tape off from the splice and turns out they left the terminals still attached, so I won't even need to do anything there.

I did not check any of the components as I do not have meter at the moment. But I think it's safe to assume what you said, that the cut off is dead. So I'll be replacing that and the thermostat.

Do you think I still need to replace the heating element?

When I opened the machine up there was a TON of undisturbed lint and dust built up. So I'm thinking the repair was done a long time ago and was a passable fix until the element went bad and caused the machine to stop working properly. Sound reasonable?

Okay thanks, I really appreciate the help