Dryer Repair Wednesday

Yesterday evening the belt broke on my 15 year old Maytag dryer.  At least, that's what it sounded like.  You never know, it could have been an idler pulley finally popping off its shaft or any number of inconvenient, expensive parts giving up the ghost.  Fifteen years of hard labor, that's long enough for one dryer to last.  A service call would probably run $100+ and a half-day of my vacation time.  Was this old dryer worth that kind of investment, or would I be throwing good money after bad?  So off I went web-surfing some of the local supplier's sites, found a "bargain" of $500, reduced to a sale price of $400, sale ending... fifteen minutes ago, when the store closed.

So I hung out my half-dried pants load, and slept on the problem.

As if on cue a likely solution occurred as I was waking up.  Youtube.  Now, the last time I'd had a belt break, when this dryer was a 5 year old pup, the answer was clear: replace the belt.  Co-workers had waved me off of it as a DIY project, assuring me that modern dryers are Lovecraftian nests of spring-loaded finger removers.  But now in our modern era of downloaded web mind-meld knowledge, things are different.  Turns out, it is a very simple job:

Now, your dryer, or Mi-Go finger puller, or whatever mechanical household horror you need to fix may be very different, so naturally you'll want to type the model name and problem into the youtube search bar.  But the principle is the same.   The Arcane Knowledge isn't quite so arcane these days.

BTW, the new belt cost a grand total of $8.54, tax included.