How to Replace Dryer Belt on Any Front Load Clothes Dryer

That ain't good. So your dryer turns on but it doesn't spin. Now there's a couple different ways you can go about this and it's one you can get somebody to repair it which costs money, you can get a brand new dryer which also costs money, or you can fix it yourself. And I like to fix things myself and I like showing you how to fix things yourself. So that's what we're going to do today. This should be universal for a lot of front load dryers and it's just basically trying to figure out how to open it up and once you do that it's very simple as far as the mechanics of it. There's a heater, there's an exhaust, there's a motor, and then there's electronics you know with timing cycles and different heat settings and stuff like that. But since the drum doesn't spin that probably means that you have a broken belt and all you need to do is get a new belt, set it back up, and you should be good to go. So let's give it a shot. So this is my dryer. It's a Kenmore 70 series. So this video will definitely work for this type of dryer but like I said it should be similar for other front loading dryers especially of this age. And the first thing you want to do is it basically comes down to investigation and figuring out how to take this thing apart. So the first thing I did is the way I like to look at it is if I can't fix this it's junk. So if I do some damage to it it's okay. I'll live with it as long as it gets fixed especially this is probably a 20 year old dryer so I'm not too concerned with it. But the first thing you want to do is kind of look around at all your points where the metal come together and see if you see any fasteners. Typically you're not going to have any fasteners but what they do is they have clips and I noticed right here that a clip was broken. You can see right there is where the clip is supposed to be. So that tells me that I can lift on this. So just grab it give it a firm pull and there's a clip right there. So now something's stopping me so now you got to figure out what that is. So you can see this lint trap. Pull this lint trap out and you can see there's two screws right here. So we're going to take these screws out because that's holding this top on. So take those out and try not to drop it in the abyss there because that means you're going to have to go and dig in there and take stuff apart that you don't need to or want to take apart. So take these screws off and you may not have to do this on your dryer or you may have another thing that's stopping you on the top but this dryer is like this. So now we can lift up and that comes up real easy. But in my case the heat vent is going to stop me from pulling this all the way up. I could have somebody hold this but since I'm working by myself I'm going to disconnect the heat. And lucky for me I have already taken the screws out and all I have to do is disconnect it like that. So you might have screws holding on a pipe. And I forgot to mention the most important thing disconnect the power. So you get your power disconnected. Now you can kind of lift this up carefully and this is on kind of like these little metal hinges and I'm just going to take this and rest it right here. So now this whole thing is exposed. You have your drum which you can see spins like this and you can just do some investigation. And right off the bat I noticed something. There's no belt. See this little mark right here? That's where the belt's supposed to be. So actually that's a good sign for us because if the belt was here and it was all attached and everything that would mean that the motor would be bad. So that's a good sign. So there's probably the belt's probably broken. Now we know we have to get to the motor which is underneath the drum so we have to figure out a way to do that. Again just look around for fasteners of any kind and I see one right here and then on the other side there's another one right there. Also this connection when you take this off because we're going to take this whole thing off the whole face make sure you disconnect connectors like this. I'm going to start with disconnecting this wire wiggle it off and for me these are 5 16ths bolts. So I'm just going to put some pressure on here to hold that from not falling while I take these out. There's one right here. Now what I can do, you can see the drum basically is going to fall out of this. So in my case this you might have fasteners on the bottom but in my case you just pull straight up because they're on little tabs down there and then you just take this whole thing and put it to the side. Now you just grab your drum it's super light pull it straight out put it out of the way for now and there it is. There's the belt and here is a pulley just sitting there so yep broken belt. So years and years of pressure on this thing it just ends up breaking just like lots of belts just like a belt in your car and then we can look around and make sure nothing else is broken. This is the motor so the belt rides right on this right here and after some investigation I found that this actually clips in here and this is kind of the belt tensioner it's got it's got like some spring to it so the belt goes around this and then in here and this holds tension on the belt so it doesn't fall off and then it goes up and around the drum. So now I got to take my belt and find a number on here. As long as your belt isn't too worn down you can read the numbers somewhere on it. In my case this is a 3394651. So I'm going to order this belt on Amazon and if you have this dryer I'll leave a link in the description to this belt that I replace. In the meantime this thing is nasty all this lint and everything so I'm just gonna vacuum that up clean it up nice and I already took change out of here. You'll probably find enough change in here to buy a belt to tell you the truth. I think this one is like eight dollars so that's a lot better than buying a whole new dryer for five hundred seven hundred dollars whatever it is. So if this works for you you're gonna save a ton of money. Look at that found two dollars and 31 cents so another five bucks got myself a belt. Okay so I got my new belt in the mail and just check it out you can see it has the same number of ribs. The old one is a lot more has a lot more deeper ribs which would make sense because it's older so it gets worn out. I'm just gonna match up the length so take this match it up like this and it's gonna be a little shorter than the old one because the old one got stretched out over the years so I'm ready to reinstall this. This is kind of the trickiest part of this job which isn't even that tricky. So before I actually put the drum in and do this I want I want to show you with the drum out. So you take your tensioner pulley and it locks in just like this and then you take your belt and pop it in this way and make sure you wrap the belt around with the rib side on the motor shaft right here and then as you pull this up around the drum this goes around the top of the drum and then this goes on the bottom and I'll show you in more detail once it's all assembled but that's what we're gonna do we're gonna put the drum in and then attach the belt. Slide our drum in and make sure it sits on those rollers back there just like that. Now we can take our belt and take it and put it so the rib side goes down on the drum. We can attach the belt on the bottom okay this is the tricky part because I'm laying on the ground and I got to get that belt I got this propped up with some bounce sheets and I got to get this belt around the shaft and through this tensioner pulley. So I'm going to take this and attach it like I said earlier grab the belt and pull this tensioner back this way it's going to kind of be a lot of tension on this that's what it's for make sure it doesn't fall off and there we go so now my belt is run properly and just to make sure the ribs get set in there I'm going to take the drum and spin it counterclockwise that looks pretty good it's bouncing up and down because I got the bounce sheets here they're actually downy but you know what I mean okay now I can reassemble this whole thing so make sure this is on properly it was a little uneven right there looking good so to reinstall this front panel you have a couple tabs on each side of the dryer and that little square is gonna slide onto that tab and it sits down and locks into place set those there watch your fingers make sure that sits on the felt piece reinstall those bolts and hold this in there's two of them at the top for this dryer anyways like I said I'm hoping if you have a dryer that's a little different at least this will give you an idea of the inner workings of a front end or a front load dryer and it's kind of problem solving gotta think about it and just dive into it don't be scared never be scared reconnect your connector if you have one make sure it's locked in there and you take this that side's broken like I said before that side's locked in I got two screws right here reinstall your lint catch or your lint trap and then I'm going to reinstall my pipe and we're going to test this thing out okay fingers crossed here plug that back in let's see oh it sounds like it's working and it is that is awesome don't try this at home so I just saved hundreds of dollars fixing this myself and I'm hoping this video helps you do the same even if you don't have this specific model dryer it comes down to problem solving and just going for it so hopefully this video helps if you want to check out my other videos you can do so here and here-ish and check out the links in the description to my Facebook page Instagram and my Patreon page they all help support this channel thanks for watching and we'll see you next time