Watching a guy at a job site replace a dryer heating element without checking the thermal fuse first

I was helping a buddy on a side job in his apartment complex over in the Westgate area. We were fixing a stack of dryers, and I saw another guy from a different company working on one. He pulled the whole drum out, swapped the heating element, put it all back together, and then looked confused when it still wouldn't heat. He spent a good 45 minutes on it. I walked over and asked if he'd checked the thermal fuse with his meter. He hadn't. Sure enough, that was the real problem, and the new element was fine. It's a basic step, but I see people skip it all the time, probably because the element is the more common fail point. It just adds so much extra work for nothing. How many of you run into techs who jump straight to the big parts without doing the simple continuity checks first?

3 comments

3 Comments

burns.richard2mo ago

Always check continuity first, saves so much time.

logan_lee882mo ago

But what if the continuity is fine and the problem is something else? I've seen people waste an hour checking every wire when the real issue was a bad ground. It's a good first step, sure, but it's not a magic fix for everything. Sometimes you gotta skip ahead.

kaiblack2mo ago

Man, this reminds me of my buddy who spent a whole weekend trying to fix his stereo. He checked every single wire for breaks, continuity was perfect. Turns out he just never plugged the RCA cables into the amp. Felt like a total genius after all that. Sometimes the fix is stupid simple and right in front of you.