Over the course of the last month or so our dryer has been hit or miss. Sometimes it would heat up, sometimes it wouldn’t. Even though I have no idea how to fix a dryer I told my wife that I would have a look at it. Really though, aside from putting clothes in and turning it on, I had no idea how a dryer even works!

On Friday our dryer finally gave up the ghost. It was time for me to put up or shut up, so I went online to find the likely culprit for the lack of heat. My wife thought she knew the problem right off the bat. “I bet it’s the timer.” I told her I doubted that was the problem, that the timer shouldn’t have anything to do with heat. Let me handle this.

After doing some research I deduced that the problem was probably the thermal fuse or the heating element. So, after learning how to take these parts off on YouTube I went to work Sunday afternoon to do just that. I was surprised at how simple it was.

Yesterday I took those parts down to the appliance store to get them checked out. They were both working fine. Great. Back home I went. If it wasn’t those parts it just had to be that darn cycling thermostat. So I took that off and drove back across the city to get that checked. There was nothing wrong with that either. Drat.

I asked the people working at the appliance store what in the world was left that could be causing the problem. Two people told me it was probably the timer. I told them it better not be because my wife told me right off the bat that was the problem. She would never let me live this one down. So, back home I went to remove the timer to bring that back to have tested.

Sure enough when I got back to the store I was told I needed a new timer. The lady who worked there said with a smile, “You’d better not tell your wife that was the problem.” Well, duh!

So, a quarter of a tank of gas and more than two hours later we had a dryer that was just like new.

I knew what was coming when my wife got home. “I told you what the problem was right off the bat.”

Smarty pants!