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Hi Jeff.. Thank you so much for your very quick reply.. I hadn't even known you had replied until I came back and looked at my thread. I thought as it does on the Stealth Forum that I would get an email telling me I had a reply to a post. In either case. Thank you very much. I have not had a moment to tear the thing apart yet with FINALLY some work coming in.. I will check everything out as you suggest and will give an update. Barry

Model Number: 110-76884100

Hello Jeff!!..

I hope your week has been a great one.. Mine has in that finally some work coming in. I am a cabinetmaker and furniture builder by trade and it has been a slooooow year. Partly why it has been so long in getting back to you cause I have some work. Since we talked last week I pulled out the dryer and yanked the back panel off to inspect the wire again cause I was smelling that smell. To my surprise I saw that the wire was in perfect shape, so I looked for any loose connections and found none. So scratched my head slid it back in and continued to use it with half loads to see how it did. Well, it would start getting warm and I would get that smell coming out of it. I felt the power cord going to the 220 outlet, felt a bit warm but nothing that would cause smell or burning wire. UNTIL TODAY. I have been running it only when I am in the shop/garage so I can keep an eye on it. I started smelling thick smoke and glanced over and I immediatly saw smoke coming off of the Plug end right at the receptacle. I turned it off immediatley and looked for flames high and and low and found none then proceeded to let it cool down. After a bit I unplugged it, inspected the plug end and found the spade on the left side literally had melted out of the rubber compound so that it wiggled back and forth easily in the molded plastice plug end. It was still connected to the wire though. So I thought hmm, wonder if that wire is loose where it connects in the dryer. There is an inspection panel about 5" accross and roughly rectangular right in front where the heavy gauge 3 wire cable goes into a slot in to the cabinet at the upper back area of the dryer. I removed it and immediatley saw a loose wire. It was what I believe to be a ground wire supposed to go to the cabinet or frame. It is crimped in the center wire metal spade connecter along with center wire of the plug wire that goes to the 220 receptacle. There is a screw that holds that center connector to the center location on the block. The other left and right plug wires connect adjacently on either side of that wire to its location on that 3 way connector block. I noticed the small wire that was crimped with the center wire had left a wear mark where it had been placed under the plate where a screw held the plate and went through an eye connector of that wire for its connection point. That wire was not connected when I took the plate off. SO.. I assume that is most probably a ground for the Dryer frame/cabinet as I said.. Can that ground missing cause a back up of current through the main plug wire to the receptacle..?? I inspected all of the wires down below again and all of the connections. The wires are perfect, showing no signs of overheating. I made sure I touched them first when I took it apart to see if any of them were hot, and to my surprise none of them were.. So,, can it be the lack of that secondary ground causing this? All three of the wires to the connector block are/were securely fastened and show zero signs of melting or of being hot. The only signs of hot wire now is the 3 prong Plug end at this point.. The receptacle also got hot enough that is needs replacing in my opinion. The contacts on the one that was the hottest has a build up of flux and garbage in and on the contact bar in that slot. The other two, the ground and the other female slot look some what dirtied up but nothing like the bad one. It is gone gone fried.. So could it be the receptacle that caused this problem now? or the ground strap to the cabinet or???? Thank you again. sorry for all the words but I wanted to make as sure as possible I explained it effectively enough. Barry

Hi Jeff, hope your day was great.. Well, I have had the dryer running now for about 2 hours and so far so good. Apparently through the years the wires in the wall receptacle had loosened up from normal hot and cold changes, from weather to being heated up by current and cooled off when current was turned off. So far no smell, heating fine, receptacle(newly replaced with good used one) is cool to the touch. So funny how other problems probably associated to the same sort of thing long ago affected the primary wire to the element to loosen up just enough to inhibit current flow and ruined that wire. The guy that fixed it probably rushed the repair job and did not wire nut it well enough and so explains why it melted again within a couple weeks. While that is going on 28 years of use on the 220 receptacle caused loose connections and burnt up the main power cord and itself.. Something I would have never thought to do, is to physically take the receptacle apart as a maintenance issue and retighten all off the connector screws. But apparently it would have stopped this last problem. Anyway, very nice it was a simple fix. And I am so glad I was wise enough to not trust it when it was acting funky and let it run while I was not over-seeing it or else my house would have probably burnt down. I cannot see how that chord was not very close to flaming.. It was mighty hot and quite melted. I thank you very much for your time. I really do appreciate it.. With life being so busy for someone to give some of their valuable time is logged in my mind. If you ever need advice with cabinet design/furniture design, kitchen design or some tips on guitar playing, all you need do is drop me a note.. I am now excited to see if in fact all of the bugs are worked out of this dryer situation now. A bit of time will tell.. All the best. Barry