Can’t Get a Good Fix on the Dryer

There are a number of dryer manufacturers that cut a corner on squirrel cage blower designs. Our Whirlpool dryer, and the one belonging to a friend, developed the rubbing blower syndrome. The fix was not that easy. It seems that the main blower is only connected to the drive shaft by a rather weak spring clamp. There are no means of positive attachment. The blower is not perfectly balanced, which means it is not immune to the accumulation of a bit of lint. After all, it is downstream from the drying clothes.

What happens is that the blower wheel vibrates just a bit on the shaft. The shaft has a split hub made of the same nylon-type of material. The result is that there is wear, resulting in greater clearance, resulting in greater vibration. Eventually the wear will reach the point that the blower wheel no longer engages the shaft, and so it does not spin, resulting in no airflow, which leads to an overheating condition, which causes the non-resettable over-temperature device to open, leaving the system non-functional.

The only possible repair is to replace the blower wheel and the over-temp protection device, which are accessed from opposite access points on the dryer. Yet even that does not eliminate the problem with the drive connection to the blower wheel, since the replacement is not improved from the original design.

The (sort-of) fix is adding a screw type hose clamp in place of the weaker spring clamp. A real fix would be a solid hub, close fitting, and a different design to keep it on the shaft, such as a bolt in the end of the shaft and a cup-washer to clamp the hub. But that would mean changing the design and adding a production step or two. Better quality does cost more to build.

This entry was submitted by William Ketel and edited by Rob Spiegel.

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