Alright, today on Repairs101 I thought I’d like to try and tackle a request about a dryer belt that I got from a viewer a while back. She wanted to know about replacing the drive belt in her clothes dryer. So, I’ve recently bought a new one. And, um, we’ll take a look at my old one before I take it to the recycling centre. Be sure and turn off the power and then pull out the plug.
The demo
So I won’t be doing this demonstration on my new machine because it’s still under warranty. But I have purposefully held onto the old machine that was here in the house when I moved in. With the express purpose of using it as a demonstrator for this video. Now if I was going to demonstrate on this machine I’d show you that the first thing that you need to do is clean your lint-trap before you have guests over.
Lint traps
OK if I was going to do a demonstration on this machine the first thing I’d show you is that you want to remove your lint trap and you’ll see. Let’s bring you in – and you’ll see there’s these two screws here that you’re going to remove to separate the lid, here, from the lint trap tunnel.
OK, you can see the lint-trap tunnel right there and you just need to remove these two screws. So that the lid will pop off and this is the most common style, you just need to work a screwdriver in under the ledge here. Sometimes there’s a notch – you just want to get down on your hands and knees and have a look. There might be a notch in here somewhere or you can just dig in and undo a release. Pop it off. And I’ll show you how it’s done on the older machine – it’s very similar but a little different.
This one’s got the lint basket out front so that’s not a problem – you don’t have to worry about that. But you will find that there are screws here and here holding the lid down in place of those other two that were connected to the lint trap tunnel.
Drum
The drum is supported on this piece that is the front – the face of it. So we just need to undo a screw right here and a screw right here. If you’re worried about the wires you can just pull them back out of your way like that. You can see, of course, the dust that’s collected inside the machine over the years. And you can imagine someone with long hair. It’s going to suck air off the floor and blow it out through the exhaust so it’s a type of. Like a vacuum as well. It’s like a vacuum cleaner. So it’s sucking up whatever debris it can off of the floor and you can see in this case it’s a lot of dust. So if you have long hair and or a lot of pets. You’re going to be doing this job a lot more often.
You can see it’s just ready to come off all by itself. OK now with those two screws out you’re ready to pull the front end forward.
So now you can disconnect these wires if you want to.
OK we’ve got the belt here. Whether you’re fishing it off or fishing it on you know you’ve just got to get around that little roller there and again a little roller on this side and out it comes. Put it right back on again because there’s nothing wrong with this one and, also, as I mentioned this unit’s going to the recycling centre right after I’m filming this video.
Dryer belt placement
So I’m just going to lay it on top. Reach underneath here and pass it past that roller. And I’m going to pass this side over here past that roller again. And I’m going to work it towards the back. I can see here there’s a stripe where it used to run. So that’s what I’m going to want it to run on. Now all I have to do is go underneath and hook it over the drive motor and the tensioner. And, um, slap a few things back together and I’m done.
So there’s the back of the old dryer. Go on down to the bottom of it and get ourselves in here after I clean it up a little bit. Yeoush.
So the first thing we discover is what a horrible mess it is inside. Anyway so I’m just going to clean this up real quick with my shop-vac. Keep in mind the power’s off and unplugged. Now we can see what we’re doing.
Belt tension
OK so straight up you can see that this is the tensioning device right here. I’ve seen some that are spring loaded. This one is a spring in of itself, by its nature. You can see the very base of it is tied into this little tab right here that’s holding it in place. It’s simply a very springy piece of a steel rod and so you just pull on it like that.
I don’t know if you’re going to be able to see. Let’s try zooming in a little.
Put it over the end of the drive shaft of the motor. And then you want to pull the tensioning device beyond it, to push up on it. Let’s see if I can do that simply and easily. And of course you don’t want to twist the belt while you’re doing that. Let’s try that again. I’ll just pull the wheel on the tensioner towards myself and then up like that. Now, again, you want to make sure that it’s not. There we go – that it’s not twisted at all so that it rolls properly. So here we’ll show you. OK so that goes on there like that and that goes on there like that and it should roll nice. There we go.
Plug it in first and then turn on the power.
