Warning: skip the cheap thermal fuse kit, lost 4 hours on a dryer

Bought a 12 dollar generic thermal fuse kit off Amazon for a Samsung dryer. The wiring pigtail didn't match, had to splice everything. Took 4 hours total, then the new fuse blew again because the real issue was the vent clog. Went to a local parts shop in Columbus, got the OEM fuse for 8 bucks, fixed in 20 minutes. Anyone else waste time on those multi-brand kits?

2 comments

2 Comments

skylerm553d ago

That 12 dollar kit got me too, but with a washing machine. The box showed a universal fit for like 40 brands, but the connectors were all wrong and the wire gauge felt flimsy. I ended up soldering the thing and it still threw a code after a week. The real kicker is I drove 15 minutes to an appliance parts store and the guy behind the counter handed me the exact part for 6 bucks, no guessing, no adapters. Those generic kits are fine if you have a 20 year old machine where everything is simple, but on anything modern they just create more problems than they solve. My rule now is if it has a circuit board or a fancy display, I pay the extra few bucks for the factory part. Saves me the headache and honestly the time I spent fighting the cheap one was worth more than the money I saved.

christopher9523d ago

Happens everywhere now, not just appliances, seems like every cheap "universal" thing is just a gamble on whether you'll spend more time fixing it than you saved. Even simple stuff like phone chargers and car accessories are getting that way, makes you wonder if they even test these kits on anything real.