My Grinding Dryer

May 29, 2021 10:42 AM

Our dryer is making a rattling noise. It kind of sounds like grinding. What should I do? Call a dryer mechanic (where do I find one of those?)? Spray WD-40 somewhere?

Here's a video.

posted by uncannyslacks to Home & Garden (7 answers total)

Are you missing a zipper or small piece of metal off some clothing? Sometimes it's that, and works itself loose. You might check around the edges/seams inside the dryer - sometimes, a thing will be sticking out somewhere, and you can wriggle it back out and solve the problem. One of the times this happened to me, it took some dish soap and pliers, but I managed to get it free in the end.

Other times, it's something broke. (And beyond that, I'm not much help, sorry.)
posted by stormyteal at 10:46 AM on May 29, 2021

Go to www.appliancepartspros.com, enter your make/model and see if you can find a matching video. When I had a grinding noise in my admittedly very different looking drier, it ended up being bearing slides that were ground down to nothing. 15 min DIY repair job (and I'm not handy). Their videos are super useful. You don't have to order from them of course, but I do since they have reasonable prices and super useful content.
posted by pyro979 at 11:18 AM on May 29, 2021 [8 favorites]

Call a dryer mechanic (where do I find one of those?)?

Searching for "dryer repair" or "appliance repair" on something like Yelp is most likely going to find you plenty of people doing that sort of thing. If you're at all uncomfortable DIYing something like this, then that's where I'd start.

(Also I'd imagine WD-40 anywhere in/on your dryer would be more likely to hurt than help anything so I wouldn't recommend trying that.)
posted by Aleyn at 12:50 PM on May 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

So mine did the same thing. It turned out to be the other thing from pyro979 as we had hoped a quick diy. (ours was a sealed thing and it was 2 hours of disassembly and expensive part). We bought a new dryer instead.

Sorry. Hope I'm wrong.
posted by chasles at 1:15 PM on May 29, 2021

Are you sure that’s not just vibration? Something leaning against the sides of the dryer?
posted by sageleaf at 2:55 PM on May 29, 2021

Other posts have some good DIY approaches to investigating the problem.

In all cases with large appliances, before calling a mechanic, find the serial number on the appliance and check on line how old it is. One of the nice things about the internet is that checking this is easy now.

The average life of a clothes dryer is ten years, according to Consumer Reports. Some other reputable sources put the age at ten to thirteen years. If yours is at that age, near it, or over it, replace it rather than paying a mechanic for repairs.
posted by tmdonahue at 6:34 AM on May 30, 2021

Definitely keep the WD40 away! If you have a gas dryer you may have a pilot light- and even if you don't you almost certainly have lint inside the dryer. Adding flammable hydrocarbons to lint in a device that has high heat in it is a recipe for a fire.

If you are reasonably handy, it's usually not terribly challenging to take the dryer apart and check the belt as well as the bearings the belt runs on- but it is a couple hours to do. There are plenty of videos on youtube showing the process, try searching for your model number.

If you aren't handy, then I'd definitely suggest hitting up yelp for appliance service or appliance repair- nextdoor recommendations are a good place for this as well, if you can get past the people being crappy neighbors aspect to the service. It'll cost a lot more to hire someone- you may just need a $15 part, but the service call and the labor will likely be 10x that- but you'll spare yourself the effort and possiblity of breaking it further if you aren't pretty comfortable with taking stuff apart and putting it back together.
posted by jenkinsEar at 8:54 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]