Admiral Dryer (ADG7005AWW) won't heat

[beyondx4]

JT,
It's been awhile since I've worked with electricity. So in order to find the short circuit, will my multimeter need to be set to check for continuity and then I'll need to see if any of the terminals or wires has continuity with the chassis ground?

Anyway, before I could start measuring, the first thing I'll need to do is replace all the melted wire on the harness around the gas valve area. Luckily everything is still intact so that I could rewire and solder each terminal individually. Of course, the only 2 wires I couldn't do anything about is the two heat-insulated wires coming off the ignitor.

Thanks alot for everybody's help!

[beyondx4]

Just an update on my attempt at repairing my gas dryer. After rebuilting the wiring harness around the valve coils, installing the new igniter, and reassembling the dryer that I've torn apart; I fired it up: there were flames in the burner and heat in the exhaust pipe!

I've been backtracking my fixes and replicating the issue: I believe I've turned the dial pointer on the AUTO setting too far (between "Less Dry" & "Off"). This probably knocked the dial outside of its operating range, causing it to stick (which sometimes happen on my little oven). The dryer overheated after running for 3hrs and possibly damaged part of the harness, shorting it somewhere. As a result, it never heated up afterwards; even after replacing the valve coils. Worse yet, the next morning, I found the the harness around the valve had melted badly and the wires from the igniter burnt up beyond use (I'd left the dryer plugged in overnight).

Now that it's back up and running, I'm able to successfully get the AUTO settings to operate normally by keeping the pointer within the "Very Dry to Less Dry" range; however, upon testing, I've found that the manual TIMER setting is much more consistent and haven't failed. So I'll likely stick to this rather than using any of the AUTO settings, just to be safe. Anyway, I appreciate everybody's contribution...not only saving the dryer, but more importantly, I've attained a new skill!

-DV   

[AJ]

Glad to hear you got it working again.
Thanks for the update. 

[elite]

please check your venting sounds like you had a lynt fire very rare that wires around coils catch on fire unless there is a venting issue allowing the flame to curl backwards from the burner tube

[beyondx4]

Thanks. The day after the fix, I went ahead and shortened/cleared the venting hole to make it more efficient. The couple of elbows might've contributed to the initial problem causing the dial to stick.

The crazy thing is that the melting of the wires near the valve happened AFTER I opened the dryer up to replace the valve coils (which I thought was broken not allowing the dryer to produce any heat; however, I later found out the igniter lights up, but it cannot light up a flame). I was disappointed and shut off the gas and quit. A few days later, I opened it up again only to find out that the wirings have completely melted, which suggested something shorted and probably lighted up the igniter while I was away. A member suggested I must first eliminate the short, which I did while carefully rebuilding the harness. After I plugged it back in, to my surprise, the dryer worked like new!

-DV