Several weeks ago, my dryer started to squeak. This was no once in a while squeak, either. All of a sudden, the sound coming from the dryer made me want to stick knitting needles in my ears to make the noise stop. And since there are plenty of knitting needles around here, something had to be done.
At first, I asked Stagg to look at it. He opened it up, took a look around, did something and made the squeak stop. For about 2 minutes. When it ran with just a few dry towels inside, there was quiet. But as soon as I put actual wet laundry in there, the horrendous squeak started again. He said he’d look at it again… soon.
So I spent a couple weeks dividing my laundry loads into thirds and trying that. The squeak was still there, but it was not nearly as bad. And, to be honest, there were some clothes that didn’t really need to be in the dryer right away like the sweaters that seem to shrink a little when I take the easy way with the dryer. And jeans. And the towels did fine when they had a little time to air dry first.
It was inconvenient, but I could manage. But then that was no longer cutting it and the squeak got louder and louder. I reminded Stagg he said he’d look at it again, and he said he’d get to it soon. Soon.
And then the squeak got loud enough for me to have had enough. Nothing, not even dry things could go into the dryer without a whine you could hear from the bottom of the driveway. So I decided it was time to take action.
At first, I tried to take the back of the dryer off. I saw Stagg moving around back there with a screwdriver, so I thought I was in the right place. Not so much. The back of my dryer doesn’t come off. I figured that out after I got all the screws out pulling only got me a few little cuts on my fingers.
So I turned to the internet. Ah, the internet. The magical place where I was able to find instructions on how to take my dryer apart complete with pictures. I took the top off. I took the front off. I saw where there was an obvious problem.
First, I tried to fix it with some tape. Duct tape fixes everything, right? Well, I couldn’t find duct tape, so I tried packaging tape. I slapped it on there, put the dryer back together and it worked smoothly. I did a little dance, told Stagg I was a goddess (he agreed) and enjoyed the 10 minutes of quiet drying until the squeak came back.
I took it apart again. The girls came home from school. I found some duct tape (technically, “duck tape”). It happened to be hot pink. I ran the dryer with the top off as a test. All systems go. Quietly. Re-unplug, put it all back together and plug it back in. I don’t know what I did wrong at that point, but I got the shock of my life. I know I screamed because Maggie came running. She looked horrified. I was horrified. And tingling. And more than a little scared. I re-plugged the dryer in with my foot. 5 minutes before an even worse noise started. Maggie came running back and wanted to know why I was running a lawnmower in the house.
Back to the internet. New pictures, and something caught my eye. The picture I saw said the “drum glides” on that dryer looked worn. My dryer didn’t have drum glides. It had spots where the drum glides should have been, but nothing that looked like the drum glides in the pictures. I thought this might be the problem, and I told Stagg that is what I needed to buy.
He decided he needed to take a look. He tried some duct tape. I told him it wouldn’t work, but he tried it anyway. To hedge his bets, he added some WD40. That made it quiet for 7 minutes, but the lawnmower noise came back.
Finally, he admitted that my diagnosis was correct. After calling Home Depot to see if they had the parts I needed (they laughed at me), I found an appliance parts store– I had no idea these existed for normal people. I went to a store, picked up 4 drum glides and another piece, took the dryer apart again and put in all the new parts. I put the dryer back together (very carefully so I didn’t give myself another jolt) and let ‘er rip.
My dryer might be running right now, but I’m not sure. It is now too quiet to hear from the next room.
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