Network Infrastructure Forums - Nortel, Cisco, Motorola, Juniper and others

I'm going to fall on the sword here... I just pulled off a very lame headed move earlier this evening and thought I would share it with anyone that cares.

I've been troubleshooting a Whirlpool dryer that tumbles but the gas won't ignite. I found the problem last week in pretty short order. The thermal fuse was bad, there was no continuity between the pins so I replaced it with a 20A automotive fuse to get the dryer going and ordered the replacement part.

The part was delivered this afternoon and wouldn't you know that the leads were too big to fit the wiring harness. So the intelligent person I am I thought, hey I'll just drop some solder on the leads and solder the leads to the wiring clips - I'll be done in a few minutes and no worries.

I went about the work and was done in very short order. I wrapped the leads with electrical tape just to be careful and was ready to put everything back together. Before I literally buttoned everything up I thought, "let me just test this thing just in case". So I plugged the dryer into the wall socket and turned it on, and I waited for the gas to ignite. And I waited, and I waited.

After 60 seconds I knew there was something wrong... what did I do wrong, what did I forget?

I stood there for a second and thought... the soldering should make a great connection between the wires and the fuse leads... perhaps there's a problem with the thermal fuse? Oh wait, thermal fuse... oh... ugh... sh*t... thermal fuse! <HOLDING FACE IN HANDS READY TO OUTRIGHT SCREAM>

In my rush to fix the problem I tried to solder the wires and fuse leads together, not thinking that the heat from the soldering would most likely cause the fuse to break (as it's designed to-do). The wife got a great big laugh out of it although she's ready to have her dryer back.

I ordered another thermal fuse, this time I believe I ordered the exact match to the original one so hopefully I won't be messing with any solder this time around.

Cheers! ??? ???

Michael, great story! It brings back memories of my plumbing skills. I had a toilet leaking and I was positive I could fix the problem. I mean how hard can it be, it all goes down right? Well long story short by the time I was done instead of the toilet being operational but just leaking once in a while a sign was taped to the lid saying 'DO NOT USE'! The wife had some inspiring words for me (use your imagination)!!!

A good friend of mine, a plumber, swung by the next day. He instructed me to stick with the IT world....

 ;D

Thanks for the comment!

You'll be happy to know the replacement thermal fuse has arrived and was successfully installed (sans the solder!).

The wife is happy again... life 2.0 can resume. :)