I have seen plenty of how-to's on throubleshooting and fixing a dryer but my Admiral dryer raises a few specific questions that I can not find the answer to. When I moved in last month it was taking 2-3 cycles to dry clothes. After two weeks it would run all night without drying clothes, there was no heat, and it was clearly struggling. I cleaned out all of the lint (handfulls...enough to completely block off the vent) from every crevice and reassembling everything. It is spinning and blowing like a champ but I'm not getting any hot air. I flipped the breakers and it didn't help - time to test electrical.

EDIT: I typed out this email before thinking to check the coils of the heating element. Upon inspecting these I did find a break and I assume this should be replaced. Still, I wonder about a couple of other things so I would appreciate your time if you would like to read on.

The only thermostats I see people testing on videos are two-pronged but this one is 4. Here I'm testing for continuity on this thermostat and getting nothing, BUT...
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...this is testing the opposite prongs on the same thermostat and there IS continuity. The picture above shows me testing the prongs that connect to blue wires while the prongs pictured below connect with red wires.
[IMG][/IMG]

I think this is the thermal fuse? It DOES have continuity.


I think this is a thermostat. It connects to the heating element and also has continuity.


Here's the heating element.. which also has 4 prongs instead of 2. The top 3 prongs all have continuity when testing any combination of them, BUT...


...testing this bottom prong doesn't work with any of the other three.
EDIT: Again, the bottom prong is only connected to the coils, which have a break in them.


Long story short, after seeing that I need to replace the heating element, the 4-pronged thermostat has me concerned. Without any information on how these pieces are SUPPOSED to react to testing, I don't want to jump the gun and replace it unnecessarily. Thank you for your time.

Dillon

Identical model dryer was spinning fine but knob wasn't automatically turning with time and there was no heat. Dryer ran for over an hour on 3 different modes with no heat. I concluded it was messed up.

I found this specific post and it was so helpful! I have a terrific multimeter but have never used it and didn't know how. After I read this post and researched how to use my multimeter we checked the ohms on each part of the electrical system on the back of the dryer, and thanks to the dude who responded to the original post I was able to know what the ohms should have read. I identified that the main thermostat was bad. I'll be replacing it tomorrow.

Without this specific post I'd have been S.O.L. on identifying the culprit.

Thanks a lot AppliancePros and the dude who posted the original query.
You helped out a lot and made me look like the MAN to my neighbor (since i'm the upstairs tenant and it's their dryer that I occasionally use.

Thanks again.. Scott!