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dewittenborn  
#1 Posted : Sunday, June 2, 2013 4:30:32 PM(UTC)
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dewittenborn

Rank: Member

Groups: Registered
Joined: 6/2/2013(UTC)
Posts: 2

DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM:


Today, our front-loading GE Dryer DCVH680EJ1WW stopped working properly. It is about 3 years old. It won't spin and it won't blow air into the drum (hot or cold). When turning it on, I hear an electric hum, but no action with air or drum.


TROUBLESHOOTING:


I tried turning the drum by hand and found that there was resistance, indicating the belt was probably okay. I ran the dryer with the door open and could not feel any air blowing into the drum. I ran the dryer with the door closed for about 5 minutes with the heat set to high. When I checked on it, the air was not hot in the dryer and there was a funny burnt plastic smell.

I then took the dryer apart.

The belt was tight around the drum, fed properly through the motor and the idler pulley, and did not look worn or stretched. It did not slip on the drum and when I turned the fan, it slowly turned the drum.

I then used a multimeter to check various parts for continuity (I don't know what all these parts are and here is where I need the most help). The following two thermistors were the only ones that did NOT have continuity (they read infinity on the meter, whereas all the other parts read zero). I copied and pasted the items directly from GE's appliance parts website:

I believe these are the inlet control and outlet controls.

INLET CONTROL THERMISTOR 506 WE4M398 $31.00
THERMISTOR , OUTLET CNTR 240 WE4M336 $70.75

https://www.geapplianceparts.com...ceParts/modelgroupsearch

The above link has diagrams of these parts because I couldn't copy/paste them into the post.

I also attempted to check the motor, but this was not as straight forward as the thermostats/fuses. I got readings of zero or near zero at all combinations of terminals 6, 7, and 8 (the only terminals with wires going into the motor). The wiring harness also has wires coming in at terminals 1, 3, and 9, but I got all infinities for any combination using these terminals. The important wires (red and brown/yellow) got good ohm readings. Terminals 1, 3, and 9 consist of a ground, a switch, and a black wire (not sure what it does) and only come into the harness and don't follow out into the motor.


MY QUESTIONS:


What do these 2 thermistors do?

I tested continuity on each of them by putting the leads on the two terminals of each individual thermistor (not touching any other items), was this correct?

What are the chances both of these would go out at the same time? If they went out at the same time, does this indicate that something else is the cause?

Do I need to do anything else to troubleshoot the motor?

I understand how the two thermistors could explain why I'm not getting any air blown into the drum. But why isn't the drum turning if the belt looked okay? Is the motor bad too? Can a bad motor make the thermistors blow? What are the chances of blowing two thermistors and a motor?



Thank you for any advise/help!!!
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dewittenborn  
#2 Posted : Monday, June 3, 2013 9:07:59 PM(UTC)
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dewittenborn

Rank: Member

Groups: Registered
Joined: 6/2/2013(UTC)
Posts: 2

FIXED (I hope).

Tonight, I took everything apart again and put it back together.......aaaaand, it works! I have no idea why it works, but it does.

Which begs the question: what was the cause of the original problem and what changed to fix it? Any guesses?

The two thermistors that did not have continuity were obviously not broken like I originally thought (and after a little research, discovered that a thermistor is a thermal resistor. So since they are resistors that change resistance depending on temperature, my settings on the multimeter were probably too low and it only looked like infinity when it was supposed to be 10,000 ohms or so).

I hope that taking it apart acted like a "reset" and that the problem doesn't pop up again.
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