On Jan 13, 5:14*pm, "RogerT" wrote:
I have a Frigidaire electric clothes dryer (Model GLER341AS0) that needed a
rear bearing assembly to be replaced. *It was making a loud clunking noise
and a friend and I were able to determine that the rear bearing assembly was
bad and the "grounding ball" had come loose and was causing the clunking
noise when the drum was spinning.

Neither my friend nor I know much about dryers, and ordinarily I would just
buy a new dryer when something like this happened to an old dryer. *But, we
found the following website which contains an excellent video on how to
replace the rear bearing assembly, so we decided to try it:

http://www.partselect.com/PartDetail...9&SourceCode=1

We bought the parts -- about $30 -- and went at it. *It all went pretty
well, and it was fun to try this repair.

However, after the repair was done, when we turned the dryer on, it ran okay
(no noise etc.) but two new symptoms appeared. *One is that after the dryer
is on for just a few minutes, it shuts off and cannot be restarted. *After
unplugging it for a while, it can be restarted and then does the same thing.
The second new symptom is that when the door is opened while the dryer is
running, it stays on and the drum continues to turn. *It should shut off
when the door is open, but it doesn't, and this was a new symptom
immediately following the repair we did.

When doing the repair, we did have to take the front off which meant
unplugging the wires to the door switch and plugging them back in to put the
front back on. *We actually had to do that a couple of times. *So, maybe
something happened to the door switch during the repair process. *We did
carefully mark the door switch wires and we are sure we put them back the
way they were originally.

We also cleaned out a ton of lint from everywhere, including in the ducts..
So, the dryer now has no blockages and pumps out tons of hot air.

The question now is, why is the dryer shutting itself off, and why is the
drum still spinning whether the door is open or closed?

One thought is the thermal limiter -- meaning maybe the dryer is overheating
for some reason and it shuts itself off as a safety feature. *But that
doesn't seem like it would explain why the drum still turns with the door
open.

Also, when taking the dryer apart, we noticed that the foam-like ring around
the front of the drum was worn down, and two of three plastic "glides"(?)
that are on the foam-like ring are broken off. *So, "maybe" the drum is
having a harder time turning without the two glides due to more friction.
And, maybe that overloads the motor and sets off some other kind of shutoff
sensor or mechanism.

At this point, we are about to just bail out on this one and get a new
dryer. *But, we're still wondering what the problem may be? *Tomorrow,
(mostly out of curiosity) we are going to replace the door switch and see
what happens.

In the meantime, I thought I'd post here in case anyone has any other ideas
about what might be going on or what is causing the shutoff, drum spin with
the door open, etc.

If you try to start it with the door open, and it does start, you have
screwed up on the wiring since it should not start with the door
open. Set the dryer to run on "no heat - air dry" and see if it still
shuts down. if it doesn't, then the high temperature limit swich may
be shutting things down. You get A for effort on at least trying to
fix it, but sounds like a D+ on the results so far, but don't give
up. Have you tried to replace those plastic pads for the front of the
drum? Does the inside light go out as you close the door? When you
say it won't restart unless yhou unplug it, have you unplugged it and
immediately tried to restart it? If it doesn't restart immediately,
let it sit an hour, plugged in, and then try to restart. Tell us more.