Our dryer smelled like something was burning. We shut it off immediately.

I pulled the back off of my dryer and started it up. No hot air... I pushed the button on the temperature limiter and it sounded like it reset. I started it back up and it is blowing hot air again. It has been running for 5 minutes with no issues. Of course I have not connected it to the vent yet.

Is there any chance that the heater is just going bad or is the heater more of a black and white thing?

There was a fair amount of lint build up below the lint trap and I have vacuumed that out. Should I pull the heater off? Is it possible that there is debris in the heater itself?

I also cleaned out the vent tube that runs about 8 feet to the outside of the house. It too had a little bit of buildup but I didn't think it was enough to cause the heat limiter to trip. Assuming there was enough to block it, could this be the sole source of my issue?

Something else I should be looking at?

Well i took the first two screws off of the heater housing and there was some burned lint in there. I cleaned it out, put it back together, and ran it again. There was immediately some more in there that lit and reset the heat limiter again. Where is this coming from? The vent is still off...

Well, I did pull out the heater and found some lint behind there that looked like it might have been getting sucked into the heating element. Now that I have put everything back to together, I go to start a cycle and I hear a click from the control board and then a click from the power block near the back and it never starts turning. What might I have done now?! Starting to question my decision to tackle this myself :)

Great, let me know how it goes!