Prompted by Micropterus's Maytag washer thread I will report my good (for a change) experience.

We left our 31 year old Maytag dryer at our old house for our daughter to adopt.

A couple day ago she reported it had begun making a noise and would shut off while drying a load of clothes.

It's a front service model so I didn't even have to pull it out from the wall. Two screws remove the front. I found the blower fan had stripped out the hub. That was the noise she heard, the dryer was shutting off because insufficient air flow allowed the heating coils to overheat triggering the limit switch.

SO... off to the local retail Maytag dealer to inquire about a new machine... I doubted they could get a new fan blade or if they could it would be a order and wait and probably expensive but AI would ask first.

Boy was I wrong!

They had it in stock... An about 3 inch thick by 6 inch diameter squirrel cage type fan blade for $22. About 5 minutes to reassemble and that 31 year old machine is back purring like a new one.

Happy camper for once... for now.

Those things seem to run forever!

When I moved into the house I'm in now 16 years ago, I purchased an old Maytag dryer at a garage sale for $5.

All I needed to do was purchase a new pigtail for it and clean it up. When I took it apart for a good cleaning I found about $15 in change and bills.

I ran that for about 10 years until the timer gave out.

That's great news. Can't beat fixing it for $22 and less than an hours work. The old appliances were built like tanks.

A new one would probably be neither accessible nor repairable.

Our washer & dryer are 1996 vintage, Kenmore. We are overdue for replacement, but every time there is an issue I look inside. So far I have been able to keep them going. I figure I may as well get all I can out of them.