Maytag Kenmore Whirlpool Dryer Won't Heat - No Burner

Back a few years ago i had a problem with my clothes dryer, it wouldn't dry the clothes.  I have a Kenmore Elite gas clothes dryer.

 
So i took off the lower cover plate and looked in there.  My Kenmore dryer has a lower access plate, which makes it a little hard to get at stuff.  But the good news is that you don't have to get behind to work on it.

I learned that the drum was turning and the flame would come on.  But after just a few seconds the flame went out.  So i went online and read many many different possible causes for this to happen.  Until finally i came across someone who had the exact problem that i had, a flame that would turn start but turn off.  The way to fix that problem was to buy two inexpensive black coil solenoids.

They somehow transfer the electrical current into burning the flame.  I didn't/don't know if that's true but since they only cost around $3, i ordered them and replaced the two old ones on my dryer.  Amazingly this worked, and the dryer has worked perfectly ever since.  Until this past month.

After drying the third load of laundry of the day, i opened the dryer door and realized that the clothes were still wet.  I thought, "I know how to fix this, buy new $3 solenoids."  But just to make sure i opened the cover plate and turned on the dryer to check.  Unfortunately this time the dryer spun but the flame never turned on.  The "glow plug" never even heated up and turned orange hot.  I realized that i had a different problem then before.  So it was back to the internet to find a solution.

Here's a video i did which shows the entire process of fixing the dryer.  But for more details, explanation and pictures you can keep reading.

Gas Dryer Won't Heat - Easy Repair

http://youtu.be/N23wdTfq6Yo

This time i found the possible answer to my problem a lot sooner than before.  It was while watching a trouble-shooting video of what to check.  The guy in the video said that within clothes dryers there are different sensors and fuses which check to make sure everything is working correctly.  Dryers are designed to turn off if things get too hot.  It's safer for a dryer fuse to blow than have it burn your house down.

The video showed to take your multimeter, set it to 2,000K for Ohm's resistance and check each sensor and fuse for continuity.  Having continuity means that it is making a complete circuit.  If you take your multimeter and touch the positive and negative sensors together the reading on the multimeter will go from 1 to 0.00.  That means that there is no resistance between the entire "loop" circuit.  If you took the + and - sensors and touched them to either side of a resistor, you would be able to determine the size of the resistor based on how much it is resisting the flow through the loop.

All the fuses and sensors in the clothes dryer are a "closed" circuit, which means that if they are working, when you touch both ends there should be continuity and the reading should go from 1 to 0.00.  So it was simply a matter of reaching in and touching both ends of the multimeter to each sensor and fuse in the dryer.  The first and second sensors i checked seemed fine, the reading went to 0.00.  But the third thing i checked turned out to be a fuse and when i touched either end there was no change, the multimeter stayed at 1.  So i removed the wires and 2 screws holding it in place and removed it.

I checked it again with the multimeter and it was the same, no change.  The multimeter did nothing when i checked the positive and negative ends of the fuse.

I thought, "It can't be this easy can it?"  So to do a quick test i taped the two wires which connected to the fuse together and turned on the dryer.  The drum turned and after about 8 seconds the flame turned on .  It seemed to be working perfectly.  That confirmed it, whatever i had just taken out was the bad part.

I turned the dryer off, i definitely didn't want to run it all spliced together, possibly burning down the house.  Then i took the part upstairs to find out what it was.  After typing in the part numbers i learned that it was a fuse that would blow if the temperature in the vent tube got too hot.  It must have blown because i was running the dryer for about 3 hours straight.

The bad news was that even though it's just a tiny little plastic part, it cost $12 plus $3 shipping.  I thought that was crazy so i checked online for a local parts store.  There was a place nearby where i could go and buy the part at the store.  But there it would have cost me $17.99.  So i ended up ordering the part from Amazon and it arrived in a few days.

In the meantime i realized that there was another dryer in our garage.  We still have Karrie's old washer and dryer and i thought, "Why don't i just take the fuse off of that dryer."  Unfortunately she has a different model dryer, hers is a Whirlpool.

The good news was that her's was way easier to work on.  Instead of a small lower base cover plate, the entire back panel comes off, exposing all the fuses and sensors.

Immediately though i saw a problem.  Although she did have a small white fuse, it wasn't the same.  There was no way that i could mount it to the other dryer, it was a different size and the holes wouldn't line up.

 But before i reinstalled it and put the cover back on i checked it with the multimeter.  (Now that i look at this picture i'm not sure if i did this correctly.  I probably should have disconnected the two wires to make sure that i was only checking the fuse and not the wires going to the dryer.)  But anyway the reading on the multimeter went from 1 to 0.00 meaning that it had continuity, so this fuse was good.

After a few days the new fuse arrived.  I screwed it back into place and attached the wires.  The flame kicks on and it's worked perfectly ever since.  Although i try not to run more than 2 loads of laundry back to back anymore.  I give it a couple hours to cool down in between.

But overall it wasn't too complicated to fix, it turns out that the inside of a dryer is pretty empty.  Just a few wires, sensors, and a big gas flame.  So if you open up your dryer door to find a pile of wet clothes don't worry.  Just try to figure out what's going on, then look up how to find the problem.  80% of the time it's that solenoid or entire solenoid assembly, which is a cheap and easy fix.