PSA: Stop using manufacturer wiring diagrams as gospel on older machines

I was working on a 15 year old Whirlpool dryer at a house in Bakersfield last Tuesday, the model number came back clean but the wiring inside was all kinds of hacked. The diagram said the thermal fuse should be on the blower housing, but someone had rerouted it to the exhaust duct with jumper wires. I spent an hour chasing a no-heat issue based on that diagram before I stopped and actually traced every wire by hand. Found a busted thermistor that wasn't even on the schematic. Ended up bypassing their bad splice job and putting everything back to factory spec. The drum still had a faint burn smell, so I told the homeowner it was time for a replacement. Has anyone else run into a situation where the original diagram was flat out wrong for a machine that old?

3 comments

3 Comments

hannahcraig2d ago

My buddy Dave had an old Maytag where the diagram showed 4 wires but 6 were actually in there.

amyh122d ago

Trace every wire back to where it connects on the machine and label them with tape before you disconnect anything. That way even if the diagram is wrong you know exactly what goes where. Then you can match the colors to the labeled terminals and ignore the extra ones if they're unused spares or something. Did you ever figure out what the extra two were for?

paige_robinson242d ago

Wiring is wiring, and if you can't read a simple diagram then labeling every single wire is just overkill. You're basically treating it like a kindergarten art project instead of trusting the schematic that came with the machine. Those engineers actually tested that thing, they know what goes where. And honestly, if you can't match colors to a diagram after double checking once or twice, maybe you shouldn't be poking around inside the machine in the first place. Extra wires are probably just grounds or something boring, not worth wasting an hour labeling each one.

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