LG Electric Dryer Thump

[Working Mom]

Help! My 2 1/2 year old LG DLE5977W front-loader electric dryer has started making a loud thump when running.  It sounds like a shoe hitting the sides, but the thump is regular.  The drum seems a little loose, but maybe that's how it is supposed to be? There's a small gap in the drum seam weld near the front edge...but the gap is so small that I don't see how it would be causing the problem, and it doesn't thump when I manually rotate the drum.  How do I figure out what is wrong? Are these dryers easy to fix?  Any advice would be much appreciated.  I have a big family with lots of laundry, so I need to get this fixed fast.

[Repair-man]

The usual causes for a thumping sound are a split drum weld or bad drum rollers, or both. You already identified the drum weld issue, which is quite common these days with the super-thin metal they use to make drums. You can darn near see thru them if they were any flimsier.

There is an LG dryer manual in the front of this forum, so look into it and see if you want to take the dryer apart to replace the drum or not. (Since we don't know your mechanical abilities, it would be silly of us to say if a job was "easy" or not. To us, everything is easy because we do it all day long.) Use your model number to look up the drum from the boxes on the left side of this page if you are curious as to the prices, etc of the parts.

[littlekslady]

Sounds like a bad belt or the pully wheels could be bad on it. Pretty easy to fix. Mine had been fixed by my hubby 3 times and I have had it over 20 years and still runs good. You can by kits to do that or buy what you need sperate and not to expensive.

[Repair-man]

Sounds like a bad belt or the pully wheels could be bad on it. Pretty easy to fix. Mine had been fixed by my hubby 3 times and I have had it over 20 years and still runs good. You can by kits to do that or buy what you need sperate and not to expensive.

Hubby may have fixed your dryer, but he has never cracked open an LG, nor do they make kits for them. Dryers are not all made the same.

[Working Mom]

I only saw the manual for LG gas dryers at the front of this forum, not for my DLE 5977W.  Would that manual work for my dryer as well? I may have to try fixing this myself, since I'm having a hard time finding someone local who will repair LG dryers.

[MajorApp]

 That manual is for gas and electric dryers. Download it and check it out. Also read through the LG forum and find the same problem other people have.

[AJ]

Hi,

Here you go.

DLE5977W Servicer Repair Manual 44 pages, 7.33Mb

Let us know if you have any other questions, thanks.

[Repair-man]

Thanks, AJ... I was on service calls all morning and did not have time to attach the manual..

[Working Mom]

You nailed it! I hired an LG authorized repair service to replace the drum and two rollers.  It cost a little over $300.    If/when it dies again, I'll get a dryer that is cheaper to repair.

The good news is that the repairman ordered the parts before he came to my house, so it got fixed in one visit.