Decommissioning a 1988 Kenmore 29” Dryer

[thatwasherguy]

Hey everyone, hope you are all well. I was given a 1988 Kenmore dryer yesterday, and it is absolutely shot. The drum rollers are bad, the timer is bad, the paint on the inside of the drum is peeling, and it’s got a ton of little dings absolutely everywhere on the exterior paint job. I was also told that it had become very unreliable over the last couple of years. That said, it is no longer a worthwhile investment to fix and sell. However, the control panel is still in pretty good condition (which is surprising given what the rest of it was like). My big idea was to replace the timer and make sure that the controls 100% work, then remove the control panel and wire harness, along with any other parts that make the 80’s dryer special, and then junk the rest. And then, at some point in the future when I have more space, buy a brand new top filter dryer from a big box store, and swap all of the 80’s Kenmore parts onto it. Has anyone ever done something like this before?
Thanks,
Thatwasherguy.

 

[thatwasherguy]

Another question…

How reliable are the MTC timers in these? I’m trying to decide weather to buy a new or used timer, and I’m a lot less familiar with these MTC timers than the Robertshaw ones. I’m also planning to install a relay to take the heating element load out of the timer, just like I did on my Maytag DE408.
Thanks,
Thatwasherguy.

 

[combo52]

Mallory clothes dryer timers

Are basically the gold standard for reliable long lived timers in US clothes dryers.

We see very few failures in these dryer timers, including the heat contact circuit very seldom fails, almost all US brands use these timers in most of their dryers, including Maytag.

The one problem we did see was a lot of the whirlpool and Kenmore dryers with the 45 minute wrinkle guard or finish guard cycle would have problems because there were two contacts for the main motor and one of them would fail keeping the motor from running at all, it was actually very easy to bypass that contact with just a jumper wire and then Dryer would just run all the way through the Wrinkle guard cycle and you could save the cost of putting an expensive timer in.

The Robert Shaw timers that Maytag and a few other smaller companies used we’re probably the worst dryer timers I’ve ever seen, thankfully maytag didn’t use them in all of their dryers, the other dryer time that gives us a lot of trouble are the timers used by GE and whirlpool in the last decade or so that have the plastic shaft those have a lot of contact problems in the heat circuit and are not easily repaired.

Picture of one of the good old Mallory timers, this one happened to come from a Westinghouse dryer from the late 70s.

John L

 

[maytag85]

Dumb question, is it possible to bypass the moisture sensor on a Whirlpool dryer, put in a power dropping resistor in and making it a thermostatic auto dry? Just wondering about that, even if it’s possible to do.

 

[combo52]

You would need a different timer and have to rewire the machine , auto dry dryers that use Time temperature. Do not have to use a power dropping resistor for the timer motor that’s just one way of doing it.

I never thought about doing this because whirlpool’s auto dry is so incredibly accurate and works beautifully. Why would you want to increase energy usage and make getting dry clothes out of the machine in one run so much more hit and miss.

I have two fully electronically controlled gas dryers, the 74 lady Kenmore and the 2004 Maytag Neptune drying cabinet dryer, and two electronically controlled whirlpool 29 inch style dryers that have a timer combined with the electronic sensor all work beautifully. You never take anything damp out of any of them or overdried.

John L