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Debate: Do you swap a whole control board or just the relay that clicks?
Ran into this last Tuesday on a 5 year old Whirlpool dryer, no heat. Found the relay on the main board was toasted, contacts welded shut. I had a spare relay in my box from a kit I bought 3 years ago. Swapped it in 10 minutes, dryer works fine. But then I got to thinking, is that the right call? My old training guy, Mike from Columbus, would say replace the whole board every time. Says a patched relay will fail again in 6 months. But boards are like $120 and a relay costs me 50 cents. I've done maybe 30 of these swaps over the last year and only had 1 come back. So what do you all do? Patch it or swap the whole thing? I'm leaning towards keeping the relay method but I might be missing something.
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jessem5913h ago
@young.ryan has a point about mixing up models, but that's a different headache entirely. On the relay versus board question, I lean toward swapping the whole board if the customer is willing to pay for it. A 50 cent fix is fine for you to do on your own machine, but for a customer paying for peace of mind, a board swap means you don't have to worry about that relay being the first domino to fall.
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young.ryan13h ago
Wait this is a Whirlpool dryer or a Whirlpool washer? Had a neighbor argue with me for 20 minutes once about his washer making a thumping noise, turned out he was drying his sneakers in there.
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I mean, the last time I tried to patch a relay on a Whirlpool board I accidentally bridged two pins with my fat thumb and let the magic smoke out. Took me 20 minutes of staring at a dead board before I admitted defeat. $120 board later and my wife still brings it up every time I say "trust me, I got this." But honestly, on the 30 swaps you've done with only one callback, that's a pretty solid track record. Maybe Mike from Columbus is right about some units, but 50 cents and 10 minutes beats $120 any day if the customer knows what they're getting into.
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