When is it Junk?

Its a question I've frequently asked myself when reviewing equipment that is shown to me to see if I can revive it. Often times I'm wrestling with considering something junk by North American standards, but facing the reality of not being able to apply those standards here. The reality of not being able to easily obtain new replacement equipment means finding other ways to keep things going.

One of the areas I run into this is with household appliances. Everyone needs to wash clothes, and we have a lot of staff and visitors here on campus, which means a lot of laundry. Most of our laundry equipment is second hand from the states, and then once here, it's used everyday for the better part of 6-8 hours. Below is one of the dryers we have here that had been moved aside and placed in the row of appliances that are in need of attention.I wrestled the dryer over to the outlet to plug it in and test it. It took off and i was immediately met with the sounds of metal scraping on metal and a motor that sounded like it had gravel stuck in it. So...is it junk?

It won't win any awards for looks but at least all the parts are there.

Well the short answer is no. Given that this dryer is still complete I opted to give it a rebuild. The joyful part of having cheaper house hold appliances is parts are usually pretty easy to get and the appliances are is very simple to take apart. The other reason for going this route is that all of the replacement parts are fairly small and can easily tag along with visitors luggage which means I can usually get them within a month. I'm always grateful for visitors willing to carry random items in their luggage. The visitor carrying the parts for this dryer informed me he had a somewhat lengthy discussion with customs regarding the dryer motor in his carry-on bag. Something I'm guessing the Apostle Paul never had to deal with on his journeys.

Not much to it once you the covers off.

So this dryer will ultimately be getting a new drum bearing, drum glide (another form of bearing), motor, belt, and blower. For about 1/3 the price of total replacement. Once it's complete it will replace a dryer in service so that that one can undergo a rebuild.

Older rear drum bearing, and two replacement drum glides

Who doesn't bring a new dryer motor with them through an airport?

Keep after it,