Spent 2 hours chasing a dryer thermal fuse that was fine. Turned out to be the vent hose.

Got a call last Thursday for a Samsung dryer tripping the thermal fuse every few loads. Pulled the back panel, tested the fuse with my multimeter, it read open. Replaced it, ran it, worked for one cycle, then blew again. Second trip I checked the exhaust run and found the flex hose had a crushed section right behind the drier, like someone shoved the machine too close to the wall. Airflow was almost zero, that was the real killer. Installed a rigid elbow and a shorter duct, no issues since. Question is, how often do you guys bother checking the full vent run on the first visit or do you just swap parts and come back?

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morgan.charlie21d ago

Funny how we always chase the part that tests bad and skip the stuff that actually made it fail, right? Seems like every trade has that same trap, the broken thing is never the real problem, it's whatever made it break. I bet half the thermal fuses we replace are just victims of some airflow issue or clogged screen we ignored the first time. Kinda like how a car will chew through alternators if you never fix the bad belt tension, you fix the symptom, not the cause. I swear, most of my callbacks come from me not trusting the obvious and digging one step deeper the first trip.