DIYbanter - View Single Post - Clothes dryer taking too long to dry clothes.

Doug Miller

In article , wrote:
I have a Sears electric dryer (110.86880100) that takes 2 70 minute
cycles to dry a load of clothes. The lint filter is clear; the
exhaust opening inside the drum is clear; there is no kink in the
exhaust tube; there is no obstruction at the end of the exhaust tube
outside the house.

So, i figured that the heating element was bad. I went to an
appliance repair parts store to buy a new heating element;

You went to buy a new element without checking the old one first??

however,
the "knowledgeable" guy at the counter told me that, if I was getting
any heat at all, the element was not bad.

You need to find a more knowledgeable parts guy.

I asked if the element had
parallel heating elements (one might be bad and the other still
working) and he said that the element was one strip

According to the illustrations at SearsPartsDirect.com, this heating element
has three coils that are physically parallel but electrically in series (wired
end-to-end). If one of the coils has broken in the middle and flopped over
onto an adjacent coil, you'd still get heat, but not as much.

I had previously checked and I have LOTS of airflow at the end of the
exhaust tube outside of the house.

Anybody got any suggestions??

Other than the obvious ones -- pull the heating element, inspect it visually,
measure its resistance with a multimeter and compare to spec -- you should
also check your washing machine. Could be somebody left it on the "delicate"
setting, which uses the low-speed spin cycle, and your clothes take longer to
dry because they're starting out wetter.